STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists received this 12 months’s Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for advancing our understanding of black holes.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences mentioned that Briton Roger Penrose will obtain half of this 12 months’s prize “for the invention that black gap formation is a strong prediction of the final idea of relativity.”
Goran Okay. Hansson, the academy’s secretary-general, mentioned German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez will obtain the second half of the prize “for the invention of a supermassive compact object on the heart of our galaxy.”
The prizes have a good time “one of the crucial unique objects within the universe,” black holes, which have change into a staple of science fiction and science reality and the place time even appears to face nonetheless, Nobel committee scientists mentioned.
Penrose proved with arithmetic that the formation of black holes was attainable, primarily based closely on Albert Einstein’s normal idea of relativity. Genzel and Ghez appeared on the dust-covered heart of our Milky Manner galaxy the place one thing unusual was occurring, a number of stars transferring round one thing they couldn’t see.
It was a black gap. Not simply an odd black gap, however a supermassive black gap, four million occasions the mass of our solar.
Now scientists know that every one galaxies have supermassive black holes.
It is not uncommon for a number of scientists who labored in associated fields to share the prize. Final 12 months’s prize went to Canadian-born cosmologist James Peebles for theoretical work concerning the early moments after the Huge Bang, and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for locating a planet exterior our photo voltaic system.
The celebrated award comes with a gold medal and prize cash of 10 million Swedish kronor (greater than $1.1 million), courtesy of a bequest left 124 years in the past by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The quantity was elevated just lately to regulate for inflation.
On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize for physiology and medication to Individuals Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton for locating the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus.
The opposite prizes, to be introduced within the coming days, are for excellent work within the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
Learn extra tales about Nobel Prizes previous and current by The Related Press at https://www.apnews.com/NobelPrizes
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