University Communications

Winter 1998
Rising Star
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Ghez is not through with black holes. Everyone wants to know about black holes, and she has a lot of time ahead of her to chase them -- "People do astronomy for a long time," she says. "We have two octogenarians in our department, Lawrence Bauer and Dan Popper, and both are still very much at work." Her next step is to look beyond their velocity to measure acceleration.

"That will help us to determine, we hope, the precise location of the black hole," she explains. "It'll take about two years."

And what does Ghez, surrounded in her office by her Mapplethorpe, her fan letters and freshman physics tests, really feel about a place like the universe?

"I have no idea," she says. Then she laughs: "It's big!"

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