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  7:30 pm, Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Fairmont Lounge, St. John's College

Black Holes

Robert Wald

University of Chicago

Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing---not even light---can escape. They are created by the complete gravitational collapse of sufficiently massive bodies. The past 40 years have seen a revolution in our understanding of black holes, and the important role they play in our universe. Most remarkable is the relationship between certain laws applying to black holes and the ordinary laws of thermodynamics, particularly the fact that---due to quantum processes---black holes "emit" thermal radiation. This talk will review some of the key features we have discovered about black holes and describe the very deep insights that they are currently providing into the nature of gravitation, thermodynamics, and quantum theory.


To learn more please visit his webpage.

Additional resources for this talk: slides, video.