The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded collectively to Roger Penrose from Britain, Reinhard Genzel from Germany and Andrea Ghez from the US for making discoveries which have formed our fashionable understanding of the universe and black holes. Half the prize went to Penrose, “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity,” the committee mentioned on its web site. Using mathematical fashions, Penrose proved that the formation of black holes was doable, relying solely on Albert Einstein’s basic concept of relativity.
The different half of the prize was break up between Genzel and Ghez, for discovering “that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy,” the observe continued.
Genzel and Ghez appeared on the dust-covered centre of our Milky Way galaxy the place one thing unusual was happening, a number of stars transferring round one thing they couldn’t see on the time – a supermassive black gap round four million instances our solar’s mass.
Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2020, for their findings in cosmology. Image Credit: Niklas Elmehed/Twitter/Nobel Prize
This was a essential discovery that has led scientists to conclude that each galaxy is house to a supermassive black gap.
The Nobel Assembly introduced the prize on the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
On Monday, three medical scientists – Harvey J Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M Rice – have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for discovering the hepatitis C virus.
The Nobel Committee mentioned the three scientists had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”