Bonn 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 9: History and Philosophy of General Relativity

AGPhil 9.2: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 13. März 2025, 14:45–15:15, HS XVII

Interpreting the Schwarzschild Metric — •Dennis Lehmkuhl — Lichtenberg Group for History and Philosophy of Physics, University of Bonn

It is sometimes said that the Schwarzschild solution to the Einstein field equations was discovered in 1916 but that it took until the 1950s or 1960s before it was understood that the Schwarzschild metric represents a black hole. Such statements are puzzling, for the Schwarzschild metric was successfully used and applied from its very inception. In this talk, I will trace the history of different applications, interpretations and, intimately linked, coordinatizations of the Schwarzschild metric. The focus will be on a.) Einstein's use of an approximation to the Schwarzschild metric in the prediction of Mercury's perihelion in 1915 and his subsequent correspondence with Schwarzschild and others on the corresponding exact solution; b.) discussions of what we would today call the event horizon of the Schwarzschild metric during the 1920s; and c.) the development of a conceptual distinction between singularities and horizons in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the resulting new perspective on the Schwarzschild metric.

Keywords: Philosophy of Physics; General Relativity; Schwarzschild metric; History of Physics