Black Holes and Quantum Gravity

Black holes have mysterious properties that indicate that they are composed of an enormous number of microscopic parts. This has led to the idea that in quantum gravity, spacetime itself emerges from something more fundamental.

In this lecture, Thomas Hartman will describe how black holes provide a window into quantum gravity and how scientists use the ‘bootstrap’ technique to study them. This line of research leads from black hole thermodynamics to the notorious sphere packing problem in mathematics, first studied by Johannes Kepler and contemporaries four centuries ago.

Hartman is an associate professor of physics at Cornell University. His research is on quantum gravity and fundamental properties of matter, spacetime, and black holes. In 2019, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his work on holographic duality.