The cosmic censorship conjecture raises the question of whether classical gravitational dynamics can drive a low-energy configuration into an accessible regime of quantum gravity, with Planck-scale curvatures and energy densities visible by distant observers. I will present evidence that cosmic censorhip is violated in the quintessential phenomenon of General Relativity: the collision and merger of two black holes. It only requires a sufficient total angular momentum in a collision in high enough number of dimensions. Nevertheless, I will argue that even if cosmic censorship is violated in this and in some other know instances, its spirit remains unchallenged: classical relativity describes the physics seen by observers outside the black holes accurately, with only minimal quantum input that does not entail macroscopic disruptions.

Although at first sight it may seem an odd idea, I will argue that it is actually quite natural to investigate the properties of General Relativity and its black holes in the limit in which the number of spacetime dimensions grows to infinity. The theory simplifies dramatically: it reduces to a theory of non-interacting particles, of finite radius but vanishingly small cross sections, which do not emit nor absorb radiation of any finite frequency. This leads to efficient calculational approaches in an expansion around this limit, as well as to intriguing connections to low-dimensional string-theory black holes.