Come along to R22 Pickavance Lecture Theatre or join online to hear from Professor Jeff Forshaw on the subject of Black Holes.

Date: Thursday 11th June 2026

Time: 14:00 – 15:00

There will be coffee/tea served in R22 Coffee Lounge at 15:00. All welcome.

Campus members with RAL site passes wishing to attend in person, please go straight to Pickavance Lecture Theatre.

Campus members without RAL site passes and non-campus members wishing to attend, please use the Zoom link to attend the talk remotely.

Black holes are fascinating objects because of the way they force us to address the biggest questions in physics such as the essential nature of space and time.

Black holes are formed when massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. The first direct image of a black hole and its vicinity was published in 2019 using observations made by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017.

Professor Forshaw will introduce black holes and go on to examine the consequences of trying to track the flow of formation into and out of a black hole. Recent insights indicate that space and time are emergent features related to key concepts including “quantum entanglement”, and in a fashion that bears some resemblance to “quantum error correcting codes”, such as are needed to make stable quantum computers.

About the speaker:

Jeff Forshaw is a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester. He is the author of four popular science books, written together with Professor Brian Cox. He won the 1999 Maxwell Medal for contributions to theoretical physics and the 2013 Kelvin Medal for contributions to the public understanding of science.