Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe—Proceedings of the 2nd Kolkata Conference on Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe Kolkata, India 10-15 February 2008 and the S

The main objective of the conference was to focus on whether we have enough evidence for existence of black holes, starting from primordial to galactic, extragalactic. Experts from various communities such as, quasars of several billion solar mass to nano quasars of a few solar mass, presented their views and were unanimous that matter has been found to disappear behind event horizons and that the “standard” view of accretion requires major changes to understand the observations. These proceedings contains the most recent results on black hole astrophysics and astronomy, the multiwavelength satellite observations and on future space missions. Recent findings on the relationship among the compact sources and Gamma-ray bursts have been presented.