Avery did his undergraduate at State University of New York at Stony Brook, and completed his PhD at the California Institute of Technology. In did Post-Doctoral Fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto before joining the Physics and Astronomy Department at University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in 2011.
Avery received many awards for his work, he was an ARCS Fellow, 2002–2004, an ITC Fellow (Harvard), 2004–2007, a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, 2007 (Derek Bok Center, Harvard University), a CITA Senior Research Associate, 2007–2011 and he became the Beatrice D. Tremaine Fellow in in 2011.
Avery is an astrophysicist and works to explain the fundamental physics of black holes and their observable characteristics. Black holes are sites where strong gravity dominates everything, from the dynamics of orbiting material to the shape of spacetime itself. As a result, they are the engines that power some of the brightest objects in the universe. Avery works on scales spanning from the horizon to the cosmos, tied together by the unique physical conditions near black hole horizons.
Avery's group studies the cosmological impact of the gamma-ray emission of black holes. At energies a million times higher than a dentist’s X-ray, these gamma rays seed the voids between galaxy clusters with a population of ultra-relativistic electron-positron pairs. The subsequent evolution of the pairs is dictated by plasma physics in the extremely relativistic regime and the structure of a putative intergalactic magnetic field that fills the universe, shedding light on both. Broderick's group studies the ultimate fate of these pairs with cutting-edge numerical plasma simulations as well as the implications for cosmological magnetic fields.
Avery is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, a unique collaboration of eight ground-based radio telescopes spread over four continents. Avery and post doc supervisor Avi Loeb proposed 10 years ago that M87 (one of the most massive galaxies in the “local” Universe) was the best place for the EHT to focus its efforts. A layperson description of their proposal can be found in Scientific American in the December 2009 Issue. In the past years, Avery participates in the creation and interpretation of the first horizon-resolving images of astronomical black holes in the history of astronomy. Using large-scale computer simulations his group explores model images, looking for signatures of deviations from general relativity and the high-energy astrophysical processes responsible for the growth of black holes and the launching of outflows that extends their influence to intergalactic distances.
On April 10th this year, the (EHT) collaboration have reported the first ever image of a black hole. They used eight interconnected ground-based radio telescopes spread over four continents. These telescopes work together using a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). It synchronises facilities around the world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, Earth-size telescope. VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an astounding resolution of 10 to 20 micro-arcseconds — equivalent to reading a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk café in Paris. With these new cluster of powerful instruments, they have obtained images of the supermassive black hole M87, the first ever image of a black hole.
"This is a landmark in astronomy, an unprecedented scientific feat accomplished by more than 200 scientists", said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. "This remarkable result has given humanity its first glimpse of the shadow of a supermassive black hole."
The EHT observations revealed a ring-like structure with a dark central region — the black hole’s shadow. This ring appears in several observations using different imaging methods, making the scientists involved confident that they have indeed captured the shadow.
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