Black holes and extra dimensions

Black holes are the most interesting prediction of General Relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity. They play a central role in astrophysics. Developments in string theory have led to new roles for black holes. Often these involve considering black holes with more than three dimensions of space. This has motivated a lot of recent research into the properties of black holes in higher dimensions. It turns out that higher-dimensional black holes can behave very differently from three dimensional black holes. In this talk I will explain some of the motivation for studying higher dimensional black holes. I will then compare and contrast the properties of black holes in three and higher dimensions.