Charles Gammie is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Born with an insatiable curiosity and a love for mathematics, Dr. Gammie's journey to the forefront of astrophysics was anything but ordinary.

Despite initially having ambitions of becoming a lawyer, a serendipitous encounter with a wise advisor steered him toward statistics and physics. Little did he know, this fateful decision would set him on a path toward the cosmos, propelling him into the world of astrophysics and a PhD he never envisioned.

Today, Dr. Gammie stands as a theoretical and computational astrophysicist whose research focuses on black holes, and the formation of stars, moons, and planets, where he has developed numerical methods for modeling relativistic plasmas, relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamics, and radiative processes in hot plasmas.

Notably, Dr. Gammie co-led the theoretical modeling efforts for the Event Horizon Telescope (ETH) project, enabling the interpretation of the EHT data and the groundbreaking first-ever image of a supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. This unprecedented collaboration across continents and disciplines showcased human ingenuity and the pursuit of knowledge.

In this conversation, Dr. Gammie shared profound insights into black holes, their mechanics, spinning nature, and implications for understanding time and space. He also explored existential topics like extraterrestrial life and reconciling science with religious beliefs, offering inspiring advice for young minds to embrace curiosity and the unconventional.

From the origins of "black holes" to the nature of time itself, this conversation was a captivating odyssey through the cosmos, guided by a brilliant scientific mind.

This is The UIUC Talkshow, and this is our conversation with Dr. Charles Gammie.

EPISODE LINKS:

Charles Gammie's Website: https://rainman.astro.illinois.edu/gammie/

Charles Gammie's UIUC Website: https://physics.illinois.edu/people/directory/profile/gammie

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

1:01 - Accretion disk

2:27 - How to model accretion disks

3:34 - How Graduate School works

5:09 - From Law to Astrophysics

10:42 - College: An Opportunity to Explore

16:01 - Childhood

21:43 - Bell Labs

25:10 - Golden Age of Astrophysics

28:02 - NASA

33:47 - Mars

41:13 - Interstellar Travel

45:52 - Gravity

50:57 - Black Holes

55:22 - Black Hole Formation

58:28 - Black Hole Image

1:02:28 - How to Make a Black Hole?

1:07:08 - Stephen Hawking

1:09:47 - Origin of "Black Hole"

1:12:03 - Time

1:19:47 - Advice for young people

1:24:52 - Dinosaurs

1:28:40 - The Story of the Black Hole Image

1:33:04 - Black Hole Videos

1:35:23 - Putting the Black Hole Picture Together

1:37:40 - Black Hole Spinning

1:41:11 - Moon Telescope

1:45:29 - Aliens

1:53:31 - Religion

🚥Overrated or Underrated Section 🚥

2:02:21 - ⚫️ The Black Hole from Interstellar

2:06:22 - 🎩 Generative AI

2:16:28 - 🐛 Wormholes

2:20:16 - Closing Words