Einstein and black holes

Among all the black hole news last week, one of the things I find most fascinating is that the very existence of black holes was merely a surprising side effect of a particular solution to Einstein’s General Relativity equations. It inspires me to consider that an idea from over a century ago is just now beginning to fully blossom (as also seen in the 2016 LIGO gravitational wave detection).

We will continue to see more of these tests of General Relativity in the coming years. This article in Astronomy discusses a number of ways that astronomers are seeking to verify whether Einstein’s gravity will hold up in the most extreme scenarios imaginable.