Nobel Physics Prize 2020

Having the science - tecnologhy category and not writing about the nobel physics prize in the blog would have been a crime :) In this post, i will briefly explain who are the winners, the reason they recieved it and the studies about their filds.

Prize winners

3 scientists have been awarded with nobel physics award this year. The award has been seperated into 2 and Roger Penrose got the first half. The other half is shared by Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel equally.

Roger Penrose

He is a scientist born in England 1931. He mostly studied in mathematics and some physics, thus greatly contributing to astrophysics. He has trained in UK and worked as a shcolar in universities like King's College or Princeton. His brother is some sort of chess champion. Smart runs in the family i guess. Penrose has also thought about consciousness and wrote books about it. He argues that the nature of thought and consciusness is far more complex and they exist regardless of the quantum processes. He kind of invented the hypothetical triangle called Tribar. Here you can find more about him.

Reinhard Genzel

He is born in Germany, 1952. He has completed his education in Germany and now working in California University. He has stuided infrared (in other words submillimeter astronomy) observations and contributed the efforts to observe the black hole in the center of the milky way galaxy. His studies helped the observations.

Andrea Ghez

She is a scientist born in New York 1965. She has majoered and worked in physics in MIT and California Institute of Technology. She works on adaptive optics methods. This methods are about eliminating the noise and interference in the waves coming from a source to a telescope. She is one of the 4 female nobel prize winners ever. She has lots of publications and public appearances on tv or documentaries. I got to know her by World Science Festival videos.

The reason to recieve the prize

Roger Penrose continues to work on general relativity after Einsteins death. Because of the lack of technology, most of the studies were mathematical rather than obervational those days. Penrose proves the black holes are a natural occurance out of the general relativity equations. In other words, that equation yields to black holes mathematicaly and they must exist. There must be objects with supposedly infinite singularities and incredible power to suck everything in, merely mathemmaticaly. He is a doomsday scenarist :) Black holes requires more explanation but it is another subject. The award is not only because of this proof. Thanks to this kind of evidence, scientists have begun working on the theory of black holes, which even Einstein has doubted they exist. This give rise to discoveries of black holes who happens to play a key role in the working of the universe.

Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel won the award by these kinds of stuides. They detect and observe the stars in the center of the milkyway galaxy for around 16 years. They realize that these stars are orbiting around an invisible object wih inexplicable speeds and orbits. Like this:

This way, they have proved a black hole that no eye or telescope can see, exists. Andrea Ghez explains the subject in more details in the video below. There are difficulties of course. If you try to look at the center of the milkyway galaxy, there are a lot of stars, planets and gas and dust in between. Therefore it is impossible to directly observe that place. They have to use infrared light and get rid of the unnecessary dirty data in the process.

There are other nobel prizes based on gravity too. For example in 1993 there has been a new pulsar discovered and it opened new possibilities and inspiration about the effects of gravity. Also, there is another prize in 2017, LIGO workers got the nobel prize, which is also about the observation of the effects of gravity. There are still mysteries about gravity. Also, string theory and quantum communication or computing has lots of potential to grow. If you ask me, developing a method to test string theory or proving or disproving it mathematicaly or developing a method to use or utilise quantum communication or computing to make quantum chips easier to produce, can be a groundbraking new study to win a nobel prize. If you want to be inspired by the previous rewards, you can take a look at this. You can also check out my post about gratity.

One key point that catches my attention is the studies of scientists like Peter Higgs or Roger Penrose recieve a nobel prize many years after their own time. They did not now their studies will help new discoveries and recieve an award many years later. For example, scientists discovered both black holes and gravitational waves based on an equation, even when they were discussing whether black holes exists or not. A simple or an absurd idea in the mind of a scientist today can turn into a study tomorrow, a discovery the next day. I think this would have been impossible with prejudice or narrow mindedness. See you at the next post :)