Scott Tremaine
Dept. Astroph. Science Obs., Princeton Univ. (Princeton, New Jersey, Etats-Unis d'Amérique)
The massive black holes found at the centers of most galaxies, including our own, are believed to be the ashes of the fuel that powered quasars early in the life of universe. I will briefly review some of the astronomical evidence for these objects and then describe some of the exotic dynamical phenomena that originate in their vicinity, including hypervelocity stars, resonant dynamical relaxation, phase transitions, and lopsided stellar disks.
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris