Colloquium "Black holes: a defense of pure reason"

Dr. Juna Kollmeier is a Guest Lecturer at the Emilio Segre Distinguished Lectures in Physics Endowed by Raymond and Beverly Sackler for the academic year 2020/2021

Abstract

Black holes are extraordinary physical and philosophical entities. In the first part of this presentation, I will describe key features of the history of the development of the concept of the black hole over time theoretically and observationally culminating in our present understanding.  I will argue that this intertwined development provides a critical counterpoint to critiques of "physicalism" and a key example of the importance of purely theoretical investigation.  I will then describe our current efforts to understand the distribution of black hole masses (over 10 orders of magnitude) and their formation with experimental programs such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and, in particular, the SDSS-V Milky Way and Black Hole Mapper programs.