Roger Penrose from the United Kingdom, Reinhard Genzel from Germany and Andrea Ghez from the United States won the Nobel Prize in Physics
Stockholm:
Britain’s Roger Penrose, Germany’s Reinhard Genzel and the United States’ Andrea Ghez won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their research on black holes, the Nobel jury said.
The physicists were selected “for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole,” the Nobel Committee said.
Penrose, 89, was awarded for demonstrating “that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes,” while Genzel, 68, and Ghez, 55, were jointly awarded for discovering “that an invisible object and extremely heavy governs the orbits of stars at the center of our galaxy, “the jury said.
Ghez is only the fourth woman to receive the physics prize since 1901 when the first Nobel prizes were awarded.
“I look forward to inspiring other young women to the field,” Ghez said at a press conference after the award was announced.
The term “black hole” refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed that it creates a field of gravity that not even light can escape.
Penrose, who works at the University of Oxford, used mathematical models to show in 1965 that black holes can form, becoming an entity from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
Their calculations showed that black holes, superdense objects that form when a heavy star collapses under the weight of its own gravity, are a direct consequence of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Genzel and Ghez have conducted research since the early 1990s, focusing on a region called Sagittarius A * in the center of the Milky Way.
Using the largest telescopes in the world, they discovered an extremely heavy invisible object, about 4 million times greater than the mass of our Sun, that pulls on the surrounding stars, giving our galaxy its characteristic whirlpool.
The pair, in particular, developed methods to see through huge interstellar gas and dust clouds to the center of the Milky Way, creating new techniques to compensate for image distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere.
In April 2019, astronomers revealed the first photo of a black hole.
Genzel is connected to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and the University of California.
Ghez is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California.
In-person ceremony canceled
The trio will share the Nobel Prize sum of 10 million Swedish crowns (approximately $ 1.1 million, 950,000 euros), half for Penrose and half for Genzel and Ghez.
They would normally receive their award from King Carlos XVI Gustav in a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of scientist Alfred Nobel, who created the awards in his last will and testament.
But the in-person ceremony has been canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, replaced by a televised ceremony showing honorees receiving their awards in their home countries.
Last year, the honor went to Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for research that increased understanding of our place in the universe.
Peebles won for showing that most of the universe is made up of “unknown dark matter and dark energy,” while Mayor and Queloz won for the first discovery, of an exoplanet outside our solar system.
This year’s Nobel Prize season began on Monday when the medicine prize was awarded to Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice along with Britain’s Michael Houghton for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, paving the way for a cure.
The winners of this year’s chemistry award will be announced on Wednesday, followed by the literature award on Thursday.
The peace prize will be announced on Friday and it is speculated that Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and other climate activists or press freedom groups could get the go-ahead for the latter.
The economics prize will conclude the Nobel Prize season on Monday, October 12.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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