Revisiting the Black Hole

JUN 01, 1999

A resurgence of theoretical and observational interest in black holes has given new impetus to the study of these intriguing objects.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882697

Roger Blandford

Neil Gehrels

Twenty‐eight years ago, in a celebrated article in PHYSICS TODAY entitled “Introducing the Black Hole,” Remo Ruffini and John Wheeler filed a dispatch from the campaign to understand gravity. With hindsight, we now see that they wrote in the middle of a golden age—spanning the mid‐1960s and the late 1970s—when remarkable discoveries in the theory of general relativity were made to confront equally stunning developments in observational astronomy.

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References

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2. M. J. Rees, Rev. Mod. Astron. 10, 179 (1997).https://doi.org/RMASEP
3. Y. Tanaka, N. Shibazaki, Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 34, 607 (1996).https://doi.org/ARAAAJ
4. K. S. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy, Norton, New York (1994).

More about the authors

Roger Blandford, Caltech, Pasadena, California.

Neil Gehrels, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.