Centennial of General Relativity (1915-2015); The Schwarzschild Solution and Black Holes

Abstract

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (1915-2015). The first nontrivial solution of the Einstein field equations was derived by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916. This Note will focus mainly on the Schwarzschild solution and the remarkable developments which it inspired, the most dramatic being the prediction of black holes. Later extensions of Schwarzschild's spacetime structure has led to even wilder conjectures, such as white holes and passages to other universes. Penrose diagrams are introduced as compact representations of extended spacetime structures. Stephen Hawking's derivations of quantum effects in black holes might provide clues to an eventual "Theory of Everything" encompassing both general relativity and quantum mechanics.