Stockholm: Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and Andrea Ghez of the US won the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for their research into black holes. The announcement was made this morning by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The Nobel Committee cites Penrose “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”, and Genzel and Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy”.
Roger Penrose invented ingenious mathematical methods to explore Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He showed that the theory leads to the formation of black holes, those monsters in time and space that capture everything that enters them.
Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered 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 prize is worth 10 million Swedish krona (about $1.1 million) and half goes to Penrose, with Genzel and Ghez sharing the other half of the prize.
Comments are closed.