The 32nd Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics

The First Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics: A Historic Perspective, Sixty Years Later (online)

11 Dec 2023, 08:45

25m

Ballroom

Plenary Talk Plenary Talk

Speaker

Prof. Kip Thorne

Description

I will tie the symposium historically to among other things,

1. Oppenheimer and Snyder on Gravitational Collapse

2. The struggle of physicists to understand the Oppenheimer/Snyder paper; the view from Russia (Landau); the 1958 Solvay Conference confrontation between Wheeler and Oppenheimer.

3. The recent movie Oppenheimer, which I gather has been viewed widely in China (and on which I was a consultant). Oppenheimer, Teller and Wheeler.

4. The discovery of Quasars - Schmidt and Greenstein

5. The immediate recognition that Quasars may be powered in some way by gravitational collapse; Wheeler’s talk on gravitational collapse at the fFirst Texas Symposium. Oppenheimer at the Symposium.

6. The astronomical community’s slowness (in my opinion) to understand the relevance and importance of the Kerr solution. And therein I’d like tie my talk to Roy’s)

7. Tommy Gold’s after dinner speech at the First Texas Symposium