A bust of Alfred Nobel is pictured prior to the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on 5 October 2020.
PHOTO: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP
Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of
Germany and Andrea Ghez of the US won the Nobel Physics Prize for their
research into black holes.Penrose, 89, was honoured for showing “that
the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes”.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”.Stockholm – Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard
Genzel of Germany and Andrea Ghez of the US 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 honoured 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.”I hope I can inspire other young women into
the field,” Ghez told a press conference after the award was announced.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, who is based at the University of Oxford,
used mathematical modelling to prove back in 1965 that black holes can form,
becoming an entity from which nothing, not even light, may escape.Einstein’s theoryHis 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.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 cancelledThe trio will share the Nobel prize sum of 10
million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million), with half going to Penrose and the
other half jointly to Genzel and Ghez.They would normally receive their prize from King
Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the
anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes
in his last will and testament.But the in-person ceremony has been cancelled this
year due to the coronavirus pandemic, replaced with a televised ceremony
showing the laureates receiving their awards in their home countries.Last year, the honour went to Canadian-American
cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz
for research that increased the understanding of our place in the universe.Peebles won for showing that most of the universe
is made up of an “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 season kicked off on Monday when
the medicine prize was awarded to Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice,
together with Briton Michael Houghton for the discovery of the Hepatitis C
virus, paving the way for a cure.The winners of this year’s chemistry prize will be
announced on Wednesday, followed by the literature prize on Thursday.The peace prize will be announced on Friday, with
speculation that Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and other climate activists or
press freedom groups could get the nod for the latter.The economics prize will wrap up the Nobel awards
season on Monday, 12 October.Did you know you can comment on this article? Subscribe to News24 and add your voice to the conversation.
