Black holes: science fact, fiction or fantasy ~ Professor Christine Done (University of Durham)

Black holes are a key plot device in science fiction and fantasy, wormholes through space and time! Here I'll separate out the fact from the fiction, and talk about how black holes went from a speculative extension of Einstein's gravity to a mainstream observational science via the  development of rockets at the start of the space age and recent breakthrough results on gravitational waves and the shadow of the event horizon. And then I'll talk about whether we could indeed use them in all those SciFy ways!