Hanging out near the event horizon of a black hole causes gravitational time dilation
Schwarzschild's solution to Einstein's equation implies the existence of black holes
Black holes were lurking in Einstein's equation from the beginning
Equations can provide insights and solutions that may not be anticipated by the person who wrote them
Einstein was unaware of the term 'black holes' and their significance in modern astrophysics
My little pandemic-lockdown contribution to the world was a series of videos called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The idea was to explain physics in a pedagogical way, concentrating on established ideas rather than speculations, with the twist that I tried to include and explain any equations that seemed useful, even though no prior mathematical knowledge was presumed. I’m in the process of writing a series of three books inspired by those videos, and the first one is coming out now: The Biggest Ideas In The Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. For this solo episode I go through one of the highlights from the book: explaining the mathematical and physical basis of Einstein’s equation of general relativity, relating mass and energy to the curvature of spacetime. Hope it works!