Changing Perspectives - Philosophical Talk Series An Uncertain View of the Invisible

Science, and physics in particular, aims to understand the world we live in from first principles. This involves forming theories and their (falsifiable) predictions and to then test these with experiments or observations using rigorous procedures. Main pillars of scientific work have been reproducibility, objectivity and rationality.

When it comes to studying black holes there are unique challenges to overcome:

• Nothing can escape a black hole, including light. It is, in this sense, invisible.
• The best theory available, Einstein's General Relativity, is incomplete and breaks down somewhere inside the black hole, which we cannot see.
• The images we can make around black holes are uncertain in unique ways, different from an ordinary camera.

In this talk Dr. Roman Gold will introduce the basics of how we can make images of black holes and how the inherent challenges are affecting both the scientific discourse and the science communication to the general public.