Galaxies & Black holes
Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany)
Most galaxies host massive black holes of masses between millions to billions of solar masses at their nuclei, which can become active galactic nuclei and quasars when they accrete gas and stars rapidly. I will discuss the major progress that has happened in the last decades to prove the massive black hole paradigm through ever more detailed, high resolution observations, in the center of our own Galaxy, as well as in external galaxies. In the Galactic Center such high resolution observations can also be used to test General Relativity in the regime of large masses and curvatures.