PIMS Public Lecture in collaboration with the RASC (Royal Astronomical Society of Canada): Kinwah Wu

The black hole is a prediction of Einstein’s theory of gravity. A black hole has at least two essential features, a singularity and an event horizon. Although the idea of a black hole has been widely accepted in the astronomical community, it is only recently that the existence of black holes has been directly verified by the detection of gravitational waves from black hole mergers by LIGO/VIRGO and through the synthetic imaging of the supermassive black hole in the M87 galaxy by the Event Horizon Telescope. While a black hole’s gravity lenses light, it also lenses particles. Thus, we can also see black holes by non-electromagnetic means. In this talk I will discuss how we study the space-time around black holes using light and how we may also study the more general aspects of black holes using relativistic particles.

Speaker Biography 

Kinwah Wu received his PhD (dissertation: Polarized Radiation from Inhomogeneous Shocks) from LSU. After posts at NASA-MSFC, Australian National University (ANU) and University of Sydney, he now holds the position Professor (Chair) of Theoretical Astrophysics and Head of Theory at Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London in UK. His current research interests include radiative transfer, accretion and outflows, black holes, and dynamics of large-scale multi-component self-gravitating systems. Kinwah has authored or coauthored more than 160 refereed research papers, covering areas from fundamental astrophysical processes (e.g. accretion flows, shock instability, Compton scattering and general relativistic radiative transfer) to various astrophysical systems (e.g. planets around white dwarfs, ultra-compact double degenerate systems, black- hole binaries, jets in AGN, X-ray sources in galaxies, galaxy clusters, and cosmic walls and voids). He received the NSW State Expatriate Researcher Award (Australia) in 2006 and the Royal Society Kan Tong Po Professorship award (UK) in 2008.