Britishblackhole scientistawarded shareofNobelprize
A BRITISH scientist has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on showing how Einstein’s general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes.
Sir Roger Penrose shares the prize with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, who showed that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy.
A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made the announcement yesterday, setting out that Sir Roger would take home half of the 10 million Swedish kronor (£ 864,000) prize, with the other two winners splitting the other half.
Sir Roger, who was born in Colchester in 1931, used “ingenious mathematical methods” in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the committee said.
It added that Einstein did not himself believe that black holes – super- heavyweight monsters that capture everything that enters them – really exist.
In January 1965, 10 years after Einstein’s death, Sir Roger, Emeritus Professor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, proved that black holes really can form and described them in detail – at their heart, black holes hide a singularity in which all the known laws of nature cease. Professors Genzel and Ghez, born in Germany and America respectively, each lead a group of astronomers that has focused on a region called Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy.