Nobel Prize 2020: Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez won Nobel Prize in Physics

New Delhi: Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez won Nobel Prize 2020 in the field physics. Roger Penrose won noble for black hole discovery and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez won it for discovering “a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.

The Nobel committee said, ‘the three laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole’.

Roger Penrose invented ingenious mathematical methods to explore Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He proved that theory leads to the formation of black holes, those monsters in time and space that capture everything that enters them. The 89 year old, was honoured for showing “that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes. He used mathematical modelling to prove back in 1965 that black holes can form, becoming an entity from which nothing, not even light, may escape.

Andrea Ghez became fourth woman to receive the physics prize since 1901 when the first Nobel prizes were handed out. Genzel and Ghez have led research since the early 1990s focusing on a region called Sagittarius A* at the centre of the Milky Way.

They discovered an extremely heavy, invisible object — around 4 million times greater than the mass of our Sun — that pulls on surrounding stars, giving our galaxy its characteristic swirl using the world’s largest telescopes.

The trio will share the Nobel prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (about $1.1 million, 950,000 euros), with half going to Penrose and the other half jointly to Genzel and Ghez.

Last year, Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were honored with this award for research that increased the understanding of our place in the universe.

This year’s Nobels season kicked off Monday when the medicine prize was awarded to Americans Harvey Alter and Charles Rice together with Briton Michael Houghton for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus, paving the way for a cure.