A public lecture by Associate Professor Gabriel Török, Ph.D.
Black holes and neutron stars are arguably the most extreme predictions of Einstein’s theory of relativity to have been confirmed to date. This lecture will review some of their properties and the observations of these objects, focusing particularly on the well-documented intense X-ray emission originating in their immediate surroundings. Although the physical origin of this emission is well understood, the pronounced variability repeatedly observed in it remains unexplained.
The Opava research group is actively involved in the international effort to explain this variability, collaborating with research institutions in Warsaw, Rome, Oxford and Charleston, among others. The lecture will explore parallels between this field of relativistic astrophysics and David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks. It will also explain how this research could fundamentally advance our understanding of the nature of extremely dense matter and the processes occurring within it at densities exceeding that of nuclear matter.