Abstract

Starting with Hawking’s famous discovery of black hole radiation physicists have used black holes as theoretical laboratories to gain new insights in to the quantum nature of gravity and spacetime. The study of quantum black holes have recently led to the insight that Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and the geometry of spacetime itself, should be viewed as being emergent from an underlying microscopic quantum theory that, in a sense, lives on the boundary of spacetime. A central role of these developments is played by the notion of quantum entanglement and its associated entropy. At present this theoretical approach is best understood for spacetimes that are negatively curved. Observation however tell us that our universe carries a positive curvature due to the presence of dark energy. In this lecture I will give an accessible account of these developments, and will present my view on how emergent gravity may sheds light on the mysteries surrounding the observed dark energy and dark matter in our universe.