The Imaginative Nature of Black Holes and Spacetime (NEW RELEASE!)
Dr. Ronald S. Gamble, Jr., a Theoretical Astrophysicist, is a CRESST-II Visiting Assistant Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland–College Park. Dr. Gamble holds professional memberships in the National Society of Black Physicists, and the American Physical Society.
Overview
The history of black holes begins with early scientists and philosophers asking themselves: “What if?” From the late 1700s to contemporary extensions of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, gravity has always been an elusive and often mysterious force of nature. The study of relativity, spacetime, and black holes often requires one to incorporate a complex mixture of abstract mathematics and several areas within theoretical physics. Scientists look at the intricate nature of black holes from multiple viewpoints, and sometimes the very nature of what we refer to as the “fabric of spacetime.”
In recent years, investigations of gravitational interactions have led us to discover new facets of this fundamental force of nature. With these discoveries the development of a more advanced theory is needed for experimental tests and extensive predictions of gravitational interactions in local and cosmological settings. This nexus point requires lots of physics, geometry, and even more imaginative creativity to solve the mystery of these dark objects in our universe. This lecture will break down these complex mechanisms in a way that will push you to imagine the creative theory of black holes and the fabric of spacetime geometry–beginning with the history of black holes and ending with what current theoretical physicists are creating today.