Three Scientists Share 2020 Nobel Prize In Physics For Black Holes Research

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was won by three scientists upon the decision of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. All of these scientists worked on advancing the human understanding of black holes.

At a ceremony in Stockholm on Tuesday, three scientists namely Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez were announced as the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics. Penrose will receive half of this year’s prize while the other half will be shared by Genzel and Ghez.

Winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics presented on the screen: Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez during a news conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in Stockholm, Sweden (Image: Reuters)

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Hailing from Britain, Roger Penrose is the winner of half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”. From Germany and the US respectively, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez are the winner’s of the other half of the prize “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.”??

The prize celebrated the human knowledge of one of the biggest mysteries of the cosmic universe - black holes. As the research around them increases every day, black holes are considered to be the ultimate answers to a lot of questions raised by science, like the formation of the universe, its ageing and how time works on a cosmic scale.

Nobel-winning work

Penrose, the winner of the first half of this year’s Nobel in physics, was able to mathematically prove that the formation of black holes was possible. These calculations were heavily inspired from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Nobel Prize Winners (Illustration/ Niklas Elmehead/ Twitter)

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Genzel and Ghez, on the other hand, were able to find a supermassive black hole, 4 million times the mass of our sun, in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. The duo observed that several stars in that cosmic location were moving around something they couldn’t see - a?black hole.

Thanks to their study, scientists now know that all galaxies have supermassive black holes. It is worth mentioning that Andrea Ghez is only the fourth woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics.

In addition to the honored award, Nobel prize winners receive a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (more than USD 1.1 million). The 124-year old heritage was started by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel and will see the handout of Nobel in chemistry, literature, peace and economics in the coming days.