October 2025 Thinking Beyond: How much does a black hole know (that it won't tell us)?

The “Thinking Beyond” webinar series features renowned physicists Paul Davies, Sara Walker and Maulik Parikh from the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University and addresses big questions/topics in science. This month, Cynthia Keeler will present the topic and will be joined by Maulik Parikh and Sara Walker. First, we will discuss what a black hole is, and what characteristics the ones in our sky have. Then, we will introduce the physical concept of entropy. Colloquially thought of as a measure of disorder, entropy has been a powerful tool for physicists for a century and a half. Accordingly, we will see how entropy is useful for studying black holes and the shape of spacetime. In particular, we will look at how black holes like to hide information from those of us who don't jump in, and how we can try to find out what's inside them anyways.