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Black holes, including the one at the center of our galaxy, hold the key to … [+]
It’s fair to say that 2020 has not been anyone’s favorite year. But there is no point wallowing in pessimism, so this is an especially good year to celebrate the Nobel Prize winners, whose astonishing research points the way to a future with less disease, less hunger, and a greater understanding of the mysteries of the universe.
It looks like 2020 will be another year with strong performance from universities in North America and Europe to push the frontiers of science. The University of California system was especially impressive, serving as a reminder of the importance of America’s great public university system and the benefits of supporting research in public universities.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was split in two this year, in recognition of two equally valuable discoveries. Half of the award went to Dr. Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics and UC Berkeley and to Dr. Andrea Ghez of UCLA. Dr. Ghez is only the third woman to receive the award since it was awarded to Marie Curie in 1903.
Genzel and Ghez peered deeply into the heart of the Milky Way. Fifty years ago, astronomers began to speculate that our galaxy spirals around a supermassive black hole, roughly 4 million times the mass of the sun. One might think that it would be easy to detect an object of that size, but since black holes absorb all the light within their event horizon, no one has been able to do so. Genzel and Chez did the best they could do. They observed clouds of gas just outside the event horizon, being whipped by incomprehensible gravitational forces at one-third the speed of light. It would be impossible to observe anything closer to the center of the galaxy. The Nobel Prize committee called their discovery “the most compelling evidence yet for a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”
The other half of the award went to Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematician at the University of Oxford. While Genzel and Ghez’s discovery was based on observation, Penrose relied on mathematics. It showed that not only were black holes possible, but that black hole formation was inevitable under the right circumstances.
Understanding the nature of black holes is crucial to understanding some of the biggest questions in the universe, such as the nature of gravity and what are the fundamental forces that shape matter and energy. As a result, the studies of black holes and cosmology have dominated the Nobel Prize winners in physics recently.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Dr. Charles Rice, of the Rockefeller University in New York City, and Michael Houghton, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and Dr. Harvey Alter of the National Institutes of Health from USA
His work has led to a drastic reduction in deaths from hepatitis C, a disease that has killed millions of people around the world. The work took place over a long period and required the collaboration of many universities such as Stanford and Washington University, as well as private industry.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry went, for the first time, to a pair of researchers: Jennifer Doudna from UC Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier from the Max Planck Unit for Pathogen Science in Berlin. They worked together to develop a method known as Crispr-Cas9 or, more colloquially, “genetic scissors,” which is a process of making specific alterations to the DNA of living cells.
His work shows that science cannot always be clearly divided between “basic” and “applied” research. According to Claes Gustafsson, president of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry: “There is enormous power in this genetic tool, which affects us all. It has not only revolutionized basic science, it has also spawned groundbreaking crops and will lead to groundbreaking new medical treatments. “
Finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded this morning to Louise Glück, a former poet laureate and adjunct professor and writer-in-residence at Yale University. The Nobel Committee based the award on “his unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty universalizes individual existence.”
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced later this week, possibly tomorrow October 9.
