Vignyana Kathegalu
Black Holes in the Universe
Speaker: Professor Ramesh Narayan (Harvard University, USA.)
A black hole is an object whose gravity is so strong that not even light can escape from it. The concept of a black hole became rigorously established in physics once Einstein developed his general theory of relativity. However, the predicted properties of black holes are so bizarre that Einstein himself, and many other physicists, did not think that these objects could possibly be real. But over recent decades, astronomers have shown that black holes are not only real, there are actually huge numbers of them in our Universe, ranging in mass from a few times to billions of times the mass of the Sun. The talk will briefly summarize our current knowledge of black holes in the Universe.
received a PhD in Physics in 1979 from Bangalore University, and spent a few years after that at the Raman Research Institute, before moving
to U.S.A. Narayan is a broad spectrum theoretical astrophysicist with a particular interest in compact objects. His research spans a range
of topics in high energy astrophysics, spanning both Galactic and extragalactic astronomy. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy
of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of The World
Academy of Sciences.