Bonn 2020 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 4: Space, Time and Symmetry III

AGPhil 4.1: Talk

Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 11:00–11:30, H-HS III

The history and interpretation of event horizons — •Dennis Lehmkuhl — Institut für Philosophie, Universität Bonn, Am Hof 1, 53113 Bonn

I will describe the conceptual evolution of what we today call the event horizons of black holes. I will first discuss Einstein's interpretation of the so-called ``Schwarzschild singularity" in Schwarzschild's original coordinates of the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations, and the subsequent discussions during the 1920s of how that singularity ought to be interpreted. I will then describe Penrose's reinterpretation of the Schwarzschild solution in the late 1950s and early 1960s, inspired by Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates, and how he reconceptualised the ``Schwarzschild singularity" in terms of what we today call an event horizon. In the course of comparing Einstein and Penrose, I will comment on the evolution of thoughts on real vs coordinate singularities, singularities vs event horizons, and local vs global structures of spacetime.