I asked professor Chandrasekhar in the mid seventies, while he lectured on Black Holes at UCSB, if we would ever know if those objects existed. The name of the lecture was " Why Are Stars as They Are?
He answered, no.
Since I didn't know any better, I let it go.
Now I know better, but he is dead. Truthfully, to this day, we do not know if they exist, but to me, the circumstantial evidence seems as tight, as in the O.J. Simpson trial!
Simpson lived a few blocks away from my father in law's house, in the Los Angeles area. I never met him, so I do not know if he had anything to do with his wife, and/or her friend's death.
The only thing that will convince extreme skeptics of the existence of black holes, is a measurement of the event horizon of SgrA*.
People are working on that.
General Relativity has precise predictions for those future measurements. If Einstein was right, we will know, when Astrometry gets to the high level of precision envisioned nowadays.
This is how science advances, either through new discoveries, or by measuring with high precision, what we think we know.
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