Trust but verify: The case for astrophysical black holes

Abstract

This article is based on a pair of lectures given at the 2005 SLAC Summer Institute. Our goal is to motivate why most physicists and astrophysicists accept the hypothesis that the most massive, compact objects seen in many astrophysical systems are described by the black hole solutions of general relativity. We describe the nature of the most important black hole solutions, the Schwarzschild and the Kerr solutions. We discuss gravitational collapse and stability in order to motivate why such objects are the most likely outcome of realistic astrophysical collapse processes. Finally, we discuss some of the observations which -- so far at least -- are totally consistent with this viewpoint, and describe planned tests and observations which have the potential to falsify the black hole hypothesis, or sharpen still further the consistency of data with theory.