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The fact that time stands still in a black hole and that the future exists even within it was beyond even Einstein’s imagination. Three researchers have received the Nobel Prize for studying black holes.
By David Beck and Uwe Gradwohl, SWR Science Editor
British Roger Penrose is honored for his research on black holes and for his contributions to general relativity and receives half of the prize money. German Reinhard Genzel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, and Andrea Ghez of the United States each receive a quarter of the price for the discovery of a supermassive object at the center of our galaxy.
“We don’t know what happens in a black hole,” says Andrea Ghez, who turned on the phone shortly after the award winners were announced in Stockholm. But what happens near a black hole has been documented more precisely than ever by her research.
For many years, the Ghez and Genzel teams independently observed the orbits of the stars around the center of our Milky Way. The shape of the orbit and the high speed at which the stars travel did not allow any other conclusion: the only possible explanation for this strange object in the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole.
Even Einstein didn’t believe in black holes
The best known among the winners is the British Sir Roger Penrose. He has published numerous popular science books on questions of quantum physics and the theory of relativity. Using entirely new mathematical methods that he developed, he provided computational evidence that black holes are as natural a consequence of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity as, for example, bent rays of light or change in the passage of time under the influence of gravitational fields.
That time stops on the surface, or rather on the outer edge, of a black hole and that the future, which cannot be accessed from the outside, already exists inside it is such a strange idea that not even one’s own Einstein believed in the existence of black holes. Roger Penrose might have convinced him with his calculations, but he did not complete or publish his work until January 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death.
Black hole in the center of the Milky Way
Black holes are objects into which an extremely large amount of mass is compressed into a very small space, creating a gravitational field so strong that even light in the vicinity of the compressed mass cannot escape this attraction. The area of space from which matter and light cannot escape appears from the outside as a black ball in space.
A black hole with the mass of Earth would have a diameter of about one centimeter. The black hole that forms when a star collapses is usually several tens of kilometers in size. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way is as big as our solar system and contains 4.3 million solar masses. A true monster of the masses.
Many questions remain open
With their discoveries, scientists have opened new doors for the study of black holes, said David Haviland, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, to justify this year’s award. However, many questions remain about these exotic objects.
By looking at the processes in its immediate vicinity, it could also be discovered whether the theory of gravitation, as physicists currently believe to be correct, still applies in the strongest gravitational fields or whether there are hints of new physical laws.
Andrea Ghez is only the fourth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics. She hopes this will motivate young women to become researchers themselves, she said shortly after the announcement.
