Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Black Holes.

Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Black Holes.

The prize was awarded half to Roger Penrose for showing how black holes could form and half to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering a supermassive object at the Milky Way’s center. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez on Tuesday for their discoveries that have bettered understanding of the universe, including work on black holes. Dr. Penrose was awarded half the prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” the committee said. 

The second half was split between Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy,” the committee said. The Nobel Assembly announced the prize at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Dr. Penrose, a Briton who is a professor at the University of Oxford, England, used “ingenious mathematical methods,” the academy said, to prove that black holes were a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, even though Einstein himself did not believe that they existed. 

Dr. Genzel, who was born in Germany, and Dr. Ghez, who was born in New York, lead a group of astronomers that focused on a region called Sagittarius A* at the center of our galaxy. By using the world’s largest telescopes, the academy said, the scientists had developed methods to see through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the center of the Milky Way. Dr. Genzel works at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Ghez is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

 

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. 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. Genzel is connected to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and the University of California.

Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.