Black Hole Mischief: Is Relativity in Trouble?

It wasn't long after Einstein amazed the world with his theory of general relativity in 1915 that physicists were busily working out its more outlandish implications. And none freakier than the spacetime disruptions we now call black holes. Black holes have been making trouble for theorists ever since: putting ideas to the test, exposing gaps and contradictions, and forcing physics to search for new unifying principles beneath the rifts. The latest bit of black hole mischief is a set of paradoxes whose solution, some say, threatens one or more pillars of modern physics and may require a rethinking of general relativity itself.Cosmologist and relativist Anthony Aguirre, who so ably introduced us to GR in our two-part primer, returns to discuss the black hole information paradox and firewall hypothesis, which are fueling one of the hottest controversies in theoretical physics today. Anthony also provides an update on the BICEP2 experiment and the reported – now retracted – discovery of primordial gravity waves that created such a stir last year.