I will give an overview of how the Event Horizon Telescope achieves its horizon scale science and what's to come. I will also review selected recent results from the Event Horizon Telescope both on Sgr A* and refined analysis of M87*. A focus will be on analysis aspects that are relevant for any theory / model building along with a few examples. The presentation aims to provide key conceptual aspects relevant to gravity experts who are new to VLBI.

To make progress in developing a quantum theory of gravity, we need to connect candidate theories to observations. I will review ideas on connecting quantum gravity to observations in particle physics, to searches for dark matter and to observations of black holes, in particular with the (next-generation) Event Horizon Telescope.

We are in a new era of gravitational physics in which both gravitational-wave measurements and cosmological observations can be used to test fundamental physics. Moreover, recent computational developments allow us to investigate (at present largely unexplored) regimes where the gravitational force is strong – a very promising area to search for new physics. In this talk I will overview two cases in which we aim to use strong-gravity to learn about the dark components of the universe: the interaction of binary black hole mergers with their dark matter environments and the emission and propagation of scalar gravitational waves, a distinct signature of theories aiming to explain dark energy.

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/92308918921?pwd=UEk1aEt3bmRxdklqUUpSNlRocldVdz09

This talk is based on joint work with Owen Gwilliam and Brian Williams. We define factorization homology of factorization envelopes valued in a collection of generalized Weyl modules supported on a cycle in a smooth complex projective variety X. When X is a smooth projective curve, and the cycle a collection of points, we recover the space of coinvariants studied in CFT. 

Zoom link:  https://pitp.zoom.us/j/97473973419?pwd=QjRQUklac2lTRlduSVc3S0FKQW9IQT09