Colloquium – Peter Galison

Peter Galison, Harvard University

Visualizing Space/Time/Matter: Physics, Film, History

In a motivated if zig-zag walk, my work tacks through physics, film, and history. The long 20th-century history of the material world of experimental microphysics—following the competing traditions of image-making and statistical arguments that competed, joining in the last quarter of the century. Image and logic, it is a deep pattern of competition and confluence in (for example) astrophysics and in medicine. On the theory side: there followed an inquiry into the competing (Einstein & Poincaré) visions of clock- and time-coordination. Clocks and maps morphed into an art installation (“the Refusal of Time”) in collaboration with South African artist William Kentridge: Newtonian time, Einsteinian time, black holes. From there a turn back to science with the Black Hole Initiative and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), with a drive toward the image of M87* (now residing in the permanent photography collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC). I’ll show some film clips from “Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know” (on Hawking et alia’s microstate calculation of the entropy of a black hole; and the EHT’s black hole image) and “Shattering Stars” (on the collision of Chandrasekhar and Eddington). Finally, to the present: the Black Hole Explorer BHEX, the proposed space mission to detect and measure the photon ring—attending to the critical role visualization plays in work on the photon ring (and on spacetime itself).

Sept 19, 2024 @ 4:10pm Central in Stevenson 5326; reception beforehand at 3:50pm in Stevenson Center 5326

Host: A Lupsasca