This Round Table is organized within the framework of the 2011 program of activities of the Scientific Counselor of the Italian Embassy in the Russian Federation, approved and financed by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It is also conceived as a cultural event in the frame of 2011 year of the Italian Culture in Russia and of Russian Culture in Italy. Co-organizer of the Round Table is the Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (BLTP JINR, Dubna).

IDEA of the Round Table
Black Holes are probably the most profound implication of General Relativity. They occupy a distinguished and outstanding position both in Mathematics and in Physics, being an endless source of inspiring views and of challenging problems, like that of the Information Loss. The pioneering work of an Italian-Russian team (Ferrara-Kallosh), that in 1995-1996 discovered the attraction mechanism in Supergravity, integrated with the string theoretical statistical interpretation of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, contributed in the same years by the American theorist Strominger, gave rise to a new season in black hole theoretical studies that is currently under further, robust, development. To such a development Italian and Russian scientists give, to the present day, fundamental contributions whose survey will be the core of the Round Table.

Black-holes of stellar mass are actually observed in the sky and together with their closest relatives, the neutron stars, will be among the targets of such Italian-Russian experimental collaborations as the Millimetron mission. Black Holes both of Stellar Mass and Giant Ones, in the core of Active Galactic Nuclei, are suspected to be responsible for the acceleration of Cosmic Rays, that are studied in several Russian-Italian collaborations, such as Pamela and the forthcoming Gamma 400.

There are also many profound crossings between Black Hole Theory and Theoretical Cosmology, the latter being a field where Italy and Russia have many perspective experimental collaborations centered around the Millimetron, and RadioAstron space-missions and the circumpolar balloon expedition OLIMPO.

Finally the Black Holes existing in the sky provide the most powerful Plasma Physics Laboratories of our Universe. The common Russian Italian efforts in Plasma Physics have lead to the launching of the IGNITOR project which is now one of the flag scientific projects in both countries ( http://personalpages.to.infn.it/~fre/RTIgnitor/).
The survey of observational and experimental aspects of Black Hole Physics is the allied aim of the Round Table.