The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Roger Penrose, Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genze, in some press articles singled out as Albert Einstein fans, but what does the German physicist have to do with the latest nobel installment? More than a century has passed from the publication of the general theory of general relativity and even its impressive findings continue to affect science. So much so that today we reward the theoretical and empirical verification that this theory leads to the formation of black holes, supermassive monsters that capture everything around them, including light.
These regions of space are, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, “the darkest secrets of the Universe”. In their hearts, Penrose said, they hide a singularity in which all known laws of nature cease. “We don’t know what’s inside a black hole and that’s what makes it so fascinating,” admitted Ghez, who is also the fourth woman in history to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and the first astronomer to get it.
His team and that of Reinhard Genzel, along with others such as Rainer Schoedel, Stefan Gillesen, Andreas Eckart and more, have performed a titanic task for more than 20 years measuring the positions of the stars that rotate very close to the black hole, called ‘S’ stars, to be able to calculate their orbits that take more than a decade, to take a single turn around them.
Measurements of these two groups match. Both found an extremely heavy invisible object – four million solar masses – that pulls the jumble of stars, making them run at breakneck speeds. It is “the most convincing evidence”, according to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, of the presence of a supermassive black hole.
We found out! Yes, but…, for some reason the Academy talks about the darkest sector of the universe, indeed, much remains to be known about black holes, such as why the general theory of relativity does not work in singularity. This will require uniting the two pillars of physics, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Andrea Ghez encourages students to pursue him. “I hope to inspire other young women in this field. If you are passionate about science there is much that can be done,” he said after the ceremony in Stockholm. “It is very important to convince the younger generation that their ability to question and think is crucial to the future of the world.”
Inspiration generated also by other great astronomers such as Henrietta Levitt and her contribution to understanding the size of our universe; Vera Rubin and her dark matter research; or Jocelyn Bell (still alive) and the discovery of the pulsars, may not have received the Nobel, but they deserve recognition for expanding what we know from the cosmos. That place we call home.
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