Event Horizon

Black holes could have been relegated to mathematics and remained a physical absurdity. They were the outcome of a thought experiment, a fantastical imagining. Imagine matter crushed to a point. Don’t ask how. Just imagine that. But nature thought of a way to make them by killing off massive stars. These dead stars collapse under their own weight so catastrophically that even light gets dragged down the hole, casting a shadow on the sky. That shadow is the event horizon, left behind while the stellar material continues to fall to an unknown fate. For the first time in human history, we have seen a black hole. The image was captured by Event Horizon Telescope, a composite telescope the size of the whole Earth. Join Pioneer Works Director of Sciences and black-hole astrophysicist, Janna Levin, alongside Dr. Sheperd Doeleman, Director of the Event Horizon Telescope, and theoretical physicist Prof. Andrew Strominger to consider the staggering implications of event horizons from astrophysics to the theory of everything. ♦

Scientific Controversies brings together two scientists in conversation to explore unsolved quandaries. The focus is on ideas and the unknown, the precipice between where we are now and where we imagine the future will bring us.