Physics
Matthew Choptuik
This session was held in person, before Science Plus moved online, and was not recorded.
About this session
A session on black holes, from a physicist whose numerical work settled a famous bet about them. Professor of Physics at the University of British Columbia, Matthew Choptuik specializes in numerical relativity — using supercomputer simulation to study Einstein's equations and gravitational collapse. He completed his Ph.D. at UBC in 1986 under Bill Unruh — who spoke to Science Plus about LIGO and gravitational waves in December 2016 — and held positions at the University of Texas at Austin before returning to UBC as professor in 1999.
In 1993 he discovered critical phenomena in gravitational collapse through numerical studies, showing — under non-generic initial conditions — the possibility of a naked singularity in general relativity with scalar matter. The question had been the subject of a bet between Stephen Hawking on one side and Kip Thorne and John Preskill on the other; Hawking conceded the bet after Choptuik's publication. His slide deck from the session is preserved in the Science Plus archive.
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