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

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.