Black holes are in sight - Nobel in physics 2020

Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 has been awarded to three scientists. One half of the prize was awarded to Roger Penrose and the other half was jointly awarded to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez. Penrose’s discovery of the singularity theorem showed black hole formation to be a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity, with these objects forming naturally in overdense regions. On the other hand, painstaking, independent studies of the motion of stars over nearly three decades by Genzel and Ghez led to the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our Galaxy, that can only be a black hole. More recent observations have enabled detection of the relativistic precession of the orbit of the star closest to the Galactic centre, the presence of massive young stars close to the supermassive black hole, and intriguing objects enshrouded in gas and dust in the innermost regions of the nuclear stellar cluster.