I found this lecture fascinating because it provided the first comprehensive, clear explanation of black holes that I’d heard and it answered a lot of questions I didn’t know I had! I really enjoyed Dr. Mathur’s presentation style and this presentation gave me a new appreciation for Dr. Hawking’s work. It’s amazing how many questions we still have about the universe, and physics is an excellent example of phenomenon of having more and more questions with each answer we find. I found it interesting that the size of stable stars is limited, meaning that the size of black holes is limited, except there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Where did that supermassive black hole come from? I found it exciting that we don’t have an answer for that yet! I also have a much greater appreciation for the work it took to be able to obtain this image of a black hole. I understand it so much better now, and enjoyed learning about how the light can bend preferentially in one direction vs. the other based on the black hole’s rotation.
Image from https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2019/4/19/how-scientists-captured-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole/
It came as a surprise to me that this image is our first of a black hole. As someone who does not follow research in the field I only vaguely remembered hearing about this. However, I first learned about their existence in middle school so would have assumed we had verified them with images already.