Alikram N. Aliev, Feza Gursey Institute
on Black Holes in Four and Higher Dimensions: New Challenges and Opportunities

The idea of a black hole is regarded as being one of the most fundamental ideas in modern theoretical physics and it occupies a central place in theories of gravity formulated in various spacetime dimensions. It is a truly remarkable fact that all these theories, from general relativity to supergravity and string theory, provide an elegant mathematical description of this idea in terms of exact solutions to the corresponding field equations. Moreover, modern astronomical observations provide compelling and overwhelming evidence for the existence of black holes in the real universe. In this talk, I will discuss the current theoretical and observational status of black holes in four and higher spacetime dimensions. I will also discuss some new results, challenges and open problems.