Monday Colloquium with Prof. Peter Galison, Harvard University

BLACK HOLES: WHERE DISCIPLINES CROSS

In this golden age of astronomy, the sky holds riveting objects: white dwarves, neutron stars, supernovae. But nothing has captured the attention of so many disciplines as black holes—from theoretical physics here, through mathematics, and astronomy to the history & philosophy of science. “History and philosophy of black holes”?—myriad returns; “of neutron stars”? —zero. In 2015/16, a group of us from across the disciplines launched the Harvard Black Hole Initiative (BHI), where disciplines could collaborate. With major work at the BHI joined internationally, in 2019 and 2022, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) released the first black hole images; the EHT is currently being extended to a next generation array. Now a new challenge, again with major work here at Harvard/SAO: a NASA-proposed space-VLBI telescope with the highest resolution in the history of astronomy.  Its goal is to detect and measure the photon ring, pure light orbiting supermassive black holes; to better understand astrophysical jet structure and launching; and to open a demographic study of supermassive black hole mass and spin.   

Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University. He currently directs the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard, a leading center for interdisciplinary research on black holes. His books include How Experiments End; Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics; Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps; and, with Lorraine Daston, Objectivity; his latest feature film is Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know.