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The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to the British Roger Penrose, the German Reinhard Genzel and the American Andrea Ghez, three pioneers in the studies of black holes, reports AFP.
Penrose, 89, won the award for finding that “the formation of a black hole is a strong prediction of the theory of general relativity,” while Genzel, 68, and Ghez, 55, were rewarded for “The discovery of a supermassive object in the center of our galaxy,” explained the Nobel jury when announcing the award in Stockholm.
Andrea Ghez becomes the fourth woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics, the most “masculine” of the six Scandinavian prizes.
The British laureate receives half of the prize of around one million euros, while the other two physicists will split the second half.
Supermassive black holes are an enigma for astrophysics and their formation is at the heart of modern astrophysical studies. The researchers believe that they devour, at an enormous speed, the gases emitted by the very dense galaxies that surround them.
Being invisible, they can only be observed through the phenomena they cause in the immediate environment. A groundbreaking first image was revealed in April 2019.
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