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The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2020 has been shared by three physicists for
their work on black holes.
Roger Penrose received half of this year's prize
"for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of
the general theory of relativity."
Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez received the second
half of the prize for independent work leading to "the discovery of a
supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy."
Based primarily on near-infrared observations to trace the orbits of
stars, the mass of the supermassive black hole at the centre of
our Galaxy has been measured to be about 4 million solar masses.
The Nobel Committee of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
said that black holes "still pose many questions that
beg for answers and motivate future research".
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