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Podcast: Cracking the Einstein Code: Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics

Speaker: Prof Fulvio Melia

Stay tuned for announcements of the next Keys to the Universe lecture in the series!

The University of Adelaide’s School of Chemistry & Physics presents a free Public Lecture…

”Cracking the Einstein Code – Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics” presented by Fulvio Melia, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Arizona and Associate Editor of the Astrophysical Journal Letters

Thursday 17 September at 6pm Napier Lecture Theatre 102

Level 1 Napier Building (follow the signs), University of Adelaide, North Terrace

Admission: Free

Prof Fulvio Melia will present the exciting account of how Albert Einstein’s mathematical code for general relativity was cracked. Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity describes the effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time. But for more than four decades after its publication, the theory remained largely a curiosity for scientists; however accurate it seemed, Einstein’s mathematical code—represented by six interlocking equations—was one of the most difficult to crack in all of science.

That is, until a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate solved the great riddle in 1963. Roy Kerr’s solution emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same year and provided fertile testing ground—at long last—for general relativity. Today, scientists routinely cite the Kerr solution, but even among specialists, few know the story of how Kerr cracked Einstein’s code.

Fulvio Melia offers an eyewitness account of the events leading up to Kerr’s great discovery. Cracking the Einstein Code vividly describes how luminaries such as Karl Schwarzschild, David Hilbert, and Emmy Noether set the stage for the Kerr solution; how Kerr came to make his breakthrough; and how scientists such as Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, and Stephen Hawking used the accomplishment to refine and expand modern astronomy and physics. Today more than 300 million supermassive black holes are suspected of anchoring their host galaxies across the cosmos, and the Kerr solution is what astronomers and astrophysicists use to describe much of their behavior.

By unmasking the history behind the search for a real world solution to Einstein’s field equations, Melia offers a firsthand account of an important but untold story. Sometimes dramatic, often exhilarating, but always attuned to the human element, Cracking the Einstein Code is ultimately a showcase of how important science gets done.