Introduction: 
Nobel Prizes are awarded in the
fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards available in
their respective fields.
Alfred
Nobel was a Swedish Chemist, Engineer and Industrialist most famously known
for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all
of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five
prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes". Nobel Prizes were first
awarded in 1901.
The
prize ceremonies take place annually. Each recipient receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a monetary award. In 2020, the Nobel Prize monetary
award is 10,000,000. A prize may not be shared among more than three individuals.
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 showed that the general theory of relativity leads to
the formation of black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered that
an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the
centre of our galaxy. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known
explanation.
Roger Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that
black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein did not himself believe
that black holes really exist, these super-heavyweight 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 really can form and described them in detail; at their
heart, black holes hide a singularity in which all the known laws of nature
cease. His groundbreaking article is still regarded as the most important
contribution to the general theory of relativity since Einstein.
Sir
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose is a British Mathematical Physicist, Mathematician, Philosopher of Science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, an emeritus fellow of Wadham College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of St John's College, Cambridge and University College London.
Penrose has
made contributions to the Mathematical Physics of general relativity and
cosmology. He has received several prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf
Prize in Physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for the Penrose–Hawking
singularity theorems, and one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
"for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the
general theory of relativity".
Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez each
lead a group of astronomers that, since the early 1990s, has focused on a
region called Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy. The orbits of the
brightest stars closest to the middle of the Milky Way have been mapped with increasing
precision. The measurements of these two groups agree, with both finding an
extremely heavy, invisible object that pulls on the jumble of stars, causing
them to rush around at dizzying speeds. Around four million solar masses are
packed together in a region no larger than our solar system.
Using the world’s largest telescopes,
Genzel and Ghez developed methods to see through the huge clouds of
interstellar gas and dust to the centre of the Milky Way. Stretching the limits
of technology, they refined new techniques to compensate for distortions caused
by the Earth’s atmosphere, building unique instruments and committing
themselves to long-term research. Their pioneering work has given us the most
convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky
Way.
Andrea Mia Ghez
Andrea Mia Ghez is an American Astronomer and Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the
University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the center of
the Milky Way galaxy. In 2020, she became the fourth woman to be awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing one half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel the
other half of the prize being awarded to Roger Penrose. The Nobel Prize was
awarded to Ghez and Genzel for their discovery of a supermassive compact
object, now generally recognized to be a black hole, in the Milky Way's
galactic center.
Reinhard Genzel
Reinhard
Genzel is a German Astrophysicist, Co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a Professor at LMU and an Emeritus Professor at the University of California,
Berkeley. He was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the
discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy",
which he shared with Andrea Ghez and Roger Penrose. Reinhard Genzel studies
infrared- and submillimeter astronomy. He and his group are active in
developing ground- and space-based instruments for astronomy. They used these
to track the motions of stars at the centre of the Milky Way, around
Sagittarius A*, and show that they were orbiting a very massive object, now
known to be a black hole. Genzel is also active in studies of the formation and
evolution of galaxies.
Black Hole
Black
hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no
particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it. The
theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can
deform spacetime to form a black hole.
The
boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event
horizon. Although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and
circumstances of an object crossing it, according to general relativity it has
no locally detectable features. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal
black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved
spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same
spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass.
This temperature is on the order of billionths of a kelvin for black holes of
stellar mass, making it essentially impossible to observe directly.
Albert Einstein
Albert
Einstein was a German-born Theoretical Physicist, widely acknowledged to be
one of the greatest Physicists of all time. Einstein is known widely for
developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions
to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum
mechanics are together the two pillars of modern physics. His mass–energy
equivalence formula,
which arises from relativity theory, has been
dubbed "the world's most famous equation". His work is also known for
its influence on the Philosophy of Science. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in
Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his
discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" a pivotal step in the
development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality
resulted in "Einstein" becoming synonymous with "genius".
Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri
Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri was an Indian Physicist, known for his research in general relativity and cosmology. His most
significant contribution is the eponymous Raychaudhuri equation, which
demonstrates that singularities arise inevitably in general relativity and is a
key ingredient in the proofs of the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems.
Raychaudhuri
was also revered as a teacher during his tenure at Presidency College, Kolkata.
Many of his students have gone on to become established Scientists.
Stephen William Hawking
Stephen William Hawking was an
English Theoretical Physicist, Cosmologist, and author who was director of
research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge
at the time of his death. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.
Hawking's scientific works included a
collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the
framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes
emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Initially, Hawking radiation
was controversial.
General Relativity:
General relativity, also known as the
general theory of relativity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published
by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in
modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines
Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of
gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional
spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the
energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation
is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential
equations.
Some predictions of general
relativity differ significantly from those of classical physics, especially
concerning the passage of time, the geometry of space, the motion of bodies in
free fall, and the propagation of light. Examples of such differences include
gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing, the gravitational redshift
of light, the gravitational time delay and singularities/black holes.
Einstein's theory has important
astrophysical implications. For example, it implies the existence of black
holes—regions of space in which space and time are distorted in such a way that
nothing, not even light, can escape—as an end-state for massive stars. There is
ample evidence that the intense radiation emitted by certain kinds of
astronomical objects is due to black holes. For example, micro quasars and
active galactic nuclei result from the presence of stellar black holes and
supermassive black holes, respectively.
Reference:
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Submitted by
Savitha M S
Shraddha G S
Srinidhi P
Srivaths B
Shubhalakshmi
