A forty year journey - Festkolloquium zum Nobelpreis für Physik 2020

Dear Students, Dear Colleagues,

It is our great pleasure to cordially invite you to a special colloquium on the occasion of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020! Please note the start of the online seminar at 16:15.

Abstract

More than one hundred years ago, Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity (GR). One year later, Karl Schwarzschild solved the GR equations for a non-rotating, spherical mass distribution; if this mass is sufficiently compact, even light cannot escape from within the so called event horizon, and there is a mass singularity at the center. The theoretical concept of a 'black hole' was born, and was refined in the next decades by work of Penrose, Wheeler, Kerr, Hawking and many others. First indirect evidence for the existence of such black holes in our Universe came from observations of compact X-ray binaries and distant luminous quasars. I will discuss the forty year journey, which my colleagues and I have beenundertaking to study the mass distribution in the Center of our Milky Way from ever more precise, long term studies of the motions of gas and stars as test particles of the space time. These studies show the existence of a four million solar mass object, which must be a single massive black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt.

The Colloquium will take place online: Zoom (Password: Kolloquium)