Nobel Physics Prize Given to Black Hole Scientists

Date: 06 October 2020 - 22:36

News ID: ۸۳۶۱۶

STOCKHOLM (AFP) -- Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and Andrea Ghez of the U.S. won the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for their research into 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 honored for showing "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 and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy,” the jury said.
Ghez is just the fourth woman to receive the physics prize since 1901 when the first Nobel prizes were handed out.
The term "black hole” refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.
Penrose, a professor at the University of Oxford who worked closely with famed physicist Stephen Hawking, used mathematical modeling to prove back in 1965 that black holes can form, becoming an entity from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
His calculations proved that black holes -- super dense objects formed 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 led research since the early 1990s focusing on a region called Sagittarius A* at the centre of the Milky Way.
Using the world’s largest telescopes, they discovered an extremely heavy, invisible object -- around 4 million times greater than the mass of our Sun -- that pulls on surrounding stars, giving our galaxy its characteristic swirl.
The pair in particular developed methods to see through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the centre of the Milky Way, creating new techniques to compensate for the image distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere.
In April 2019, astronomers unveiled the first photo of a black hole.
Martin Ward, a professor of astronomy at Durham University, called the work of the trio "a great example of theoretical insight and prediction followed by state-of-the-art observational evidence.”
"Using classical Newtonian mechanics the nearest super massive black hole at our galactic centre was revealed, and so ‘darkness made visible’,” Ward said in a statement.
Genzel is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and a professor at the University of California.
Ghez is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California.