Posted: 7:00 AM EDT October 6, 2020 | Updated: 5:13 p.m. EDT, October 6, 2020
British mathematician Sir Roger Penrose won the Nobel Prize in Physics for a work he published 55 years ago
Professor Penrose used Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity to prove that black holes exist and explain how they are formed
Published in 1965, his seminal research article is still considered the most important addition to Einstein’s work ever published
Einstein didn’t believe black holes were real and died ten years before Sir Roger’s work proved he was wrong
So far Sir Roger has received little public acclaim for his groundbreaking work – in part thanks to his famous collaborator, Stephen Hawking
While the late Stephen Hawking has become the face and voice of 21st century physics, Sir Roger, who was knighted in 1994, has remained little known outside academia
Nobel Prizes are awarded to studies based on physical observations, which Professors Penrose and Hawking did not qualify for due to the theoretical nature of their research
However, more than half a century after the publication of the book, the conclusions of the 1965 article have been repeatedly observed and proven to be correct
Therefore, Sir Roger, now 89, was eligible for a Nobel Prize for his research
Sir Roger has received little public acclaim for his groundbreaking work published in 1965, in part thanks to his famous collaborator, Stephen Hawking (pictured left, Stephen Hawking and right, Roger Penrose)
A Nobel cannot be awarded posthumously and, therefore, Stephen Hawking will never receive one after his death in 2018
Experts lamented that it took so long for the Nobel Committee to recognize their work, as Penrose may have shared the award with Hawking
« It’s a shame that Penrose and Hawking didn’t get the Nobel before, » Luc Blanchet, of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and director of the National Center for Scientific Research, told AFP
‘This award comes two years after (Hawking)’ s death but their work took place in the 1960s and its importance has been recognized since the 1980s’
Professor Pembrose shares the prize with Professor Genzel, 68, from the Max Planck Institute for Alien Physics in Germany, and Professor Ghez, 55, from UCLA
These two world-famous astronomers will share half the price for « the discovery of a compact supermassive object at the center of our galaxy »
Professor Genzel and Professor Gheaz led two independent research projects that helped find the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A *
Professors Andrea Ghez (left) and Reinhard Genzel (right) share half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics thanks to their work which led to the discovery of a « compact supermassive object at the center of our galaxy »
Speaking at a virtual press conference today from his home in Oxford, Sir Roger spoke about his achievements and work with Professor Hawking
He recounted how he met Hawking after a talk he gave on his black hole theory in London and they then met to continue discussions on the topic.
In the movie « The Theory of Everything » Professor Penrose (played by Christian McKay) meets a young Stephen Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne) in a small lecture hall at Kings College London
‘According to the movie, Stephen was sitting in the audience with sparks coming out of his head based on this lecture, but he wasn’t there!
‘I gave a repeat talk in early 1965 and Stephen was present at it, then I had a private conversation with Stephen and George Ellis and it was a much deeper conversation where we talked details of my argument
‘And then we didn’t have much contact, I was one of his doctoral examiners, and his theorem had clear advances on what I had done
‘Later when I was at another conference and had to develop all of Stephen’s theorems together in one lecture, I remember working hard until the wee hours of the night to do this , and I developed a theorem that encompassed them all
« When I got back to England I called Stephen and said ‘look I have a new theorem’ and he said ‘Oh I have one too! « and it turned out we had the same result, so we both found the same thing
‘This was an article we wrote together in the Royal Society, which more or less encompassed the theorems that existed before’
The theory states that when a dying star implodes beyond a point of no return, its gravitational field will irresistibly create what is called a gravitational singularity in space-time, where known laws of physics cease to exist
In 1988 Professor Penrose received the lesser-known but much coveted Wolf Prize in Physics for his work on General Relativity and Singularities, which he worked on alongside Stephen Hawking
Jim Al-Khalili, author and professor of physics at the University of Surrey, said: “I cannot tell you how delighted I am that Roger Penrose has received a Nobel Prize
‘To many outside of physics, he was seen as being in the shadow of his longtime collaborator, the late Stephen Hawking
‘But while Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts the existence of black holes, Einstein himself did not believe that they really existed
‘Penrose was the first to mathematically prove, in 1965, that they are a natural consequence of the theory of relativity and not just science fiction’
Roger Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods to prove that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity
Einstein himself didn’t believe that black holes really exist, those super heavy monsters that capture everything that enters them Nothing can escape, not even light
In January 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death, Roger Penrose proved that black holes can really form and described them in detail; at their heart, black holes hide a singularity in which all known laws of nature cease
His groundbreaking article is still considered the most important contribution to the theory of general relativity since Einstein
Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez each led a group that, since the early 1990s, had focused on Sagittarius A * at the center of our galaxy
The measurements of these two groups both found an extremely heavy and invisible object that shoots at nearby stars, causing them to rush at breakneck speeds
The area is the size of our solar system but has the mass of four million suns, a truly huge object
Using the world’s largest telescopes, Genzel and Ghez developed methods to see the center of the Milky Way
They have refined new techniques and their pioneering work has provided us with the most convincing evidence to date of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way
Receiving the award, Sir Roger said: ‘It was a huge honor and a great pleasure to hear the news this morning in a somewhat unusual way
He added that he got a call from his personal assistant who got a « strange message » and that she was not allowed to talk about it because it was a « deadly secret »
But while waiting for the call, Sir Roger decided to take a shower He was worried about being ‘completely naked’ and having to tell them, if asked, what he was doing at the time
Ulf Danielsson, member of the Nobel Committee, spoke about Sir Roger’s enormous achievement in today’s announcement
He spoke of the mathematical dilemma that confused all physicists, mathematicians and astronomers in the early 1960s
At that time, black holes were revered as almost mythical objects, speculated and only existing on paper, no one could prove their existence or how they were formed
‘He understood mathematics, he introduced new tools and was then able to prove that this is a process you can naturally expect – for a star to collapse and turn into a black hole’
« The discoveries of this year’s laureates have pioneered the study of compact and supermassive objects, » said David Haviland, chairman of the Nobel committee for physics
‘But these exotic objects still pose many questions that call for answers and motivate future research’
In 1905 Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers and that the speed of light in a vacuum is independent of the motion of all observers – known as the theory special relativity
This revolutionary work introduced a new framework for the whole of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time
He then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration into the theory, eventually publishing his theory of general relativity in 1915
In its simplest form, it can be thought of as a giant rubber sheet with a bowling ball in the center
In the photo are the original historical documents related to Einstein’s prediction of the existence of gravitational waves, presented at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
As the ball deforms the leaf, a planet bends the fabric of space-time, creating the force we feel as gravity
Einstein predicted that if two massive bodies came together, it would create such a ripple in space-time that it should be detectable on Earth
In a segment that saw the crew visit a planet that fell under the gravitational grip of a massive black hole, the event significantly slowed down time.
The planet’s crew barely aged while those on the ship were decades older on their return
Sir Roger Penrose is a highly decorated scientist In 1994 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II (pictured), for his services to science
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roger Penrose for the discovery of black holes and to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for discovering « a compact supermassive object at the center of our galaxy »
Professors Genzel and Ghez split the other half of the Nobel Prize for their discovery of an invisible and extremely heavy object residing in a region in the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A *
During the 1990s, they both ran independent projects studying Sagittarius A * and discovered that in this space there was « an extremely heavy and invisible object that shoots at the jumble of stars, causing them to rush at breakneck speeds’
It was a supermassive black hole four million times the mass of our sun and it helped prove that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of all galaxies
Professor Tom McLeish, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of York, said: ‘Penrose, Genzel and Ghez together showed us that black holes are awesome, mathematically sublime and actually exist’
Professor Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the Physics Prize, after Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018
In a virtual press conference after the announcement, she said: ‘I hope I can inspire other young women in the field
‘This is a field that has so much to enjoy, and if you are passionate about science, there is so much to do’
‘We have no idea what’s inside the black hole and that’s what makes these things so exotic’
The Nobel Committee has said that black holes ‘still pose many questions that demand answers and motivate future research’
Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them – not even light
They act as sources of intense gravity that suck dust and gases around them Their intense gravitational pull is believed to be what the stars in galaxies orbit around
How they form is still poorly understood Astronomers believe they can form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times the size of the sun collapses into a black hole
Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which lie at the center of every known massive galaxy.
Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the mass of the sun, which ends up turning into a black hole after running out of fuel and collapsing
When these giant stars die, they also become a « supernova », a huge explosion that expels matter from the star’s outer layers into deep space
Last year’s prize went to Canadian-born cosmologist James Peebles for his theoretical work on the first moments after the Big Bang, and to Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for discovering a planet outside of our solar system
The famous prize includes a gold medal and a share of the prize money, which amounts to SEK 10 million (over $ 1 million / £ 864,200)
The prize and the funds come from a legacy left 124 years ago by the creator of the prize, Alfred Nobel The amount has recently increased to account for inflation
Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite and it is believed that a wave of guilt late in life led him to write a new will in 1895, leaving his fortune, estimated at around $ 250 million, for create the Nobel Prize
He was an inventor with hundreds of patents, but his money came from dynamite, as he profited generously from the misery and death it caused
After reading an obituary about his life, published in error, he decided to create the institute upon his death and change his inheritance posthumously
He would die just a year later, and his name lives on in the most coveted science award
Yesterday the Nobel Committee awarded the Physiology and Medicine Prize to Americans Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice and British-born scientist Michael Houghton for discovering the hepatitis C virus that ravages the liver
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The other prizes recognize outstanding work in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics
The galactic center of the Milky Way is dominated by a resident, the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A * (Sgr A *)
Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas at the center of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun
Evidence of a black hole at the center of our galaxy was first presented by physicist Karl Jansky in 1931, when he discovered radio waves originating from the region
Just 26,000 light years from Earth, Sgr A * is one of the few black holes in the universe where you can actually witness the flow of matter nearby
Less than 1% of the material initially in the black hole’s gravitational influence reaches the event horizon, or point of no return, as much of it is ejected
Therefore, the X-ray emission of material near Sgr A * is remarkably low, like that of most giant black holes in galaxies in the near universe
The captured material must lose heat and angular momentum before it can dive into the black hole Ejection of material allows this loss to occur
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