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A12 SCIENCE
Wednesday 7 OctOber 2020
3 scientists win Nobel physics prize for black hole research

By DAVID KEYTON, SETH BO- trained their sights on the
RENSTEIN and FRANK JOR- dust-covered center of
DANS our Milky Way galaxy, a
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three region called Sagittarius
scientists won the Nobel A(asterisk), where some-
Prize in physics Tuesday thing strange was going on.
for establishing the all-too- It was "an extremely heavy,
weird reality of black holes invisible object that pulls on
— the straight-out-of-sci- the jumble of stars, causing
ence-fiction cosmic mon- them to rush around at diz-
sters that suck up light and zying speeds," according
time and will eventually to the Nobel Committee.
swallow us, too. It was a black hole. Not just
Roger Penrose of Britain, an ordinary black hole, but
Reinhard Genzel of Germa- a supermassive one, 4 mil-
ny and Andrea Ghez of the lion times the mass of our
United States explained to sun.
the world these dead ends The first image Ghez got
of the cosmos that are still was in 1995, using the Keck
not completely understood Telescope in Hawaii that
but are deeply connected, had just gone online. A
somehow, to the creation year later, another image
of galaxies. seemed to indicate that
Penrose, an 89-year-old at the stars near the center of
the University of Oxford, re- In this Nov. 4, 2019, file photo, cargo cranes are used to take containers off of a Yang Ming Marine the Milky Way were circling
ceived half of the prize for Transport Corporation boat at the Port of Tacoma in Tacoma, Wash. something. A third image
proving with mathemat- Associated Press led Ghez and Genzel to
ics in 1964 that Einstein's think they were really on to
general theory of relativity verse. Just their existence was surprised at his winning Martin Rees, the British as- something.
predicted the formation of is mind-bending. They are because his work is more tronomer royal, noted that A fierce competition de-
black holes, even though so massive that nothing, theoretical than observa- Penrose triggered a "renais- veloped between Ghez
Einstein himself didn't think not even light, can escape tional, and that's not usually sance" in the study of rela- and Genzel, whose team
they existed. their gravitational pull. They what wins physics Nobels. tivity in the 1960s, and that, was using an array of tele-
Genzel, who is at both the warp and twist light in a What fascinated Penrose together with a young Ste- scopes at the European
Max Planck Institute in Ger- way that seems unreal and more than the black hole phen Hawking, he helped Southern Observatory in
many and the University of cause time to slow and was what was at the other firm up evidence for the Big Chile.
California, Berkeley, and stop. end of it, something called Bang and black holes. "Their rivalry elevated
Ghez, of the University of "Black holes, because they the "singularity." It's some- "Penrose and Hawking are them to greater scientific
California, Los Angeles, re- are so hard to understand, thing science still can't fig- the two individuals who heights," said Harvard as-
ceived the other half of the is what makes them so ap- ure out. have done more than any- tronomer Avi Loeb.
prize for discovering in the pealing,'' Ghez, 55, said "Singularity, that's a place one else since Einstein to Unlike with other achieve-
1990s a supermassive black after becoming the fourth where the densities and deepen our knowledge of ments honored with No-
hole at the center of our woman ever to win a No- curvatures go to infinity. You gravity," Rees said. "Sadly, bels, there is no practical
galaxy. bel in physics. "I really think expect the physics go cra- this award was too much application for these dis-
Black holes fascinate peo- of science as a big, giant zy," he said from his home. delayed to allow Hawking coveries.
ple because "the idea of puzzle." "If you fall into a black hole, to share the credit." "Is there a practical appli-
some monster out there While the three scientists then you pretty well inevi- Hawking died in 2018, and cation to Beethoven's Ninth
sucking everything up is a showed the existence of tably get squashed into this Nobel Prizes are awarded Symphony?" Columbia's
pretty weird thing," Penrose black holes, it wasn't until singularity at the end. And only to the living. Greene asked. "But its ex-
said an interview with The last year that people could that's the end." New York University astro- istence, this type of spec-
Associated Press. He said see one for themselves Penrose said he was walk- physicist Glennys Farrar tacular knowledge, is part
our galaxy and the galax- when another science ing to work with a col- said: "There is no doubt that of what gives life meaning."
ies near us "will ultimately team captured the first league 56 years ago, think- if this prize were awarded The Nobel comes with a
get swallowed by one ut- and only optical image of ing about "what it would when Hawking was still gold medal and 10 million
terly huge black hole. This one. It looks like a flaming be like to be in this situa- alive, he would share it. He kronor (more than $1.1 mil-
is the fate ... but not for an doughnut from hell but is tion where all this material did overall more significant lion), courtesy of a bequest
awful long time, so it's not in a galaxy 53 million light- is collapsing around you." work on this subject than al- left 124 years ago by the
something to worry too years from Earth. He realized he had "some most anyone." prize's creator, Alfred No-
much about." Penrose, a mathematical strange feeling of elation," Genzel, 68, and Ghez won bel, the inventor of dyna-
Black holes are at the cen- physicist who got the call and that was when things because "they showed mite.
ter of every galaxy, and from the Nobel Commit- started coming together in that black holes are not On Monday, the Nobel in
smaller ones dot the uni- tee while in the shower, his mind. just theory — they're real, medicine was awarded
they're here, and there's a to Americans Harvey J. Al-
monster-size black hole in ter and Charles M. Rice
the center of our galaxy, and British-born scientist
the Milky Way," said Brian Michael Houghton for dis-
Greene, a theoretical phys- covering the liver-ravaging
icist and mathematician at hepatitis C virus. The prizes
Columbia University. for chemistry, literature,
In the 1990s, Genzel and peace and economics will
Ghez, leading separate be announced in the com-
groups of astronomers, ing days.q