Colloquia

Black holes are bridges between astrophysics and fundamental physics.  I will describe three examples of this theme.  First, I will explain how contemporary theoretical ideas deriving from the holographic principle have proven useful for interpreting numerical simulations of electromagnetic outflows from spinning black holes.  These models are currently being tested against X-ray and radio observations of galactic black holes.  Second, I will describe a correspondence between black holes and lower dimensional fluids and discuss the possibility of probing this correspondence with gravitational wave memory experiments.  Finally, I will describe how gravitational wave observations of black hole tidal interactions might be used to find new symmetries acting on the event horizon.