The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to 3 Physicists this year in 2020. The winners are:
Roger Penrose, University of Oxford, UK
"for his discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity"
Reinhard Genzel, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany and University of California, Berkeley, USA
and
Andrea Ghez, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
"for their discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy"
Roger Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist, these super-heavyweight monsters that capture everything that enters them. Nothing can escape, not even light. In January 1965, ten years after Einstein's death, Roger Penrose proved that black holes really could form and described them in detail; at their heart, black holes hide a singularity in which all the known laws of nature cease. His groundbreaking article is still regarded as the most important contribution to the general theory of relativity since Einstein.
Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez each lead a group of astronomers that, since the early 1990s, has focused on a region called Sagittarius A* at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The orbits of the brightest stars closest to the middle of the Milky Way have been mapped with increasing precision. The measurements of these two groups agree, with both finding an extremely heavy, invisible object that pulls on the jumble of stars, causing them to rush around at dizzying speeds. Around four million solar masses are packed together in a region no larger than our solar system. Using the world's largest telescopes, Genzel and Ghez developed methods to see through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the center of the Milky Way. Stretching the limits of technology, they refined new techniques to compensate for distortions caused by the Earth's atmosphere, building unique instruments and committing themselves to long-term research. Their pioneering work has given us the most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
"The discoveries of this year's Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole", says David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
This is the picture of the Black Hole below that was observed for the first time ever and reported on April 10, 2019 and that work was done by a large group of 200 scientists of 16 different countries from all over the world.
Dr. Mahbub Khan
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
California State University and Colleges
Formerly: Senior Scientist at IBM in Silicon Valley
IEEE Chairman of Silicon Valley (SCVS/SFBAC)
California, USA
408-859-3566-cell
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