Lecture by Lecture by Christine Jones Forman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

Most galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole at their center.  At high redshifts, these galaxies experienced a very active phase, when these black holes produced enormous amounts of energy, likely fueled through galaxy mergers.  Today, some of these supermassive black holes still undergo occasional outbursts that are seen through spectacular jets, cavities and buoyant bubbles and shocks in the surrounding X-ray gas.  In this talk I will review Chandra X-ray results on AGN outbursts in rich clusters and groups as well as the effects of outbursts in Centaurus A and other elliptical galaxies.  These observations allow us to measure the recent outburst history of supermassive black holes, including the ages of the outbursts and the amount of energy in the outburst. 

This is a Ross Mathematics Summer Program lecture.