4 November 2026: Philip Wiseman

Speaker: Philip Wiseman (University of Southampton)

Date: Wednesday 4 November 2026

Time: 14:00

Location: Physics 3.21 (Berry)

The most luminous transients in the Universe

Accretion of matter onto supermassive black holes is the most efficient process of liberating energy in the Universe. Recently, we have discovered a class of extraordinary eruptions from galactic nuclei that most come from black hole accretion, but whose observed properties defy our current understanding of how black holes grow. These Ambiguous Nuclear Transients (ANTs) share some characteristics of continuously accreting supermassive black holes (active galactic nuclei; AGN), and the shredding of stars by black holes (tidal disruption events; TDEs). However, their extreme luminosity challenges existing accretion models and their time-integrated energy output is the highest for any transients in the Universe. Understanding the physical scenario of ANTs is of utmost importance for knowing how supermassive black holes grow and how the environments around them are sculpted. In this talk I will discuss the discovery of ANTs in all-sky surveys, introduce the plausible physical mechanisms, and showcase how the rate of ANT discovery is primed to explode with the introduction of Rubin/LSST and how we plan to address the opportunities and challenges presented by impending data deluge.