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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
- tchalla 6y agoThe press release has a popular science background - https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/popular-physicsprize2020.pdf https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/popular-physicspr... Highly recommend the illustrations on the press release for a quick overview Cross section of a black hole (pdf) - https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig2-phy-en-cross-section.pdf https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig2-phy-en-cross... The Milky Way - https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig3-phy-en-milky-way.pdf https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig3-phy-en-milky... Stars closest to the centre of the Milky Way - https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig4-phy-en-stars-closest.pdf https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig4-phy-en-stars...
- frereubu 6y agoAn illustration in the press release contains this phrase: "When a massive star collapses under its own gravity, it forms a black hole that is so heavy that it captures everything that passes its event horizon. Not even light can escape. At the event horizon, time replaces space and points only forward. The flow of time carries everything towards a singularity furthest inside the black hole, where density is infinite and time ends." I enjoy reading passages like that because there's a point where I lose comprehension completely - after "Not even light can escape" - and the rest of it is enjoyably poetic gibberish to a non-physicist like me. It reminds me of the beginning of The Four Quartets by TS Eliot: Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoHonestly, "time replaces space" is probably intentionally dramatic: I don't think anyone really means more than that the light-cone is so tilted it lies completely outside of where it started. In practice it just means that wherever you try to go you'll end up in the same place, basically you're going down a funnel and the exceptional thing is that the funnel is made out of spacetime itself.
- Sharlin 6y agoWell, time does very concretely swap roles with one of the spatial dimensions, namely the radial one. They change signs in the metric, making the radial dimension timelike and the old temporal dimension spacelike.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoI think there is more to the special status of time than just the sign convention used, so I find this mathematical detail about as interesting as the singularity on the event horizon.
- konschubert 6y agoI’m a Physicist (Not Astrophysicist, but still. ) I can assure you that this is also gibberish to me. These kind of popular science translations are like one-way hash functions. If you really understand the science, you can probably recognize where they are coming from. But by themselves they contain 0 information.
- abdullahkhalids 6y agoAs someone who understands hash functions, I understand where you are coming from and got non-zero information from your comment.
- mturmon 6y agoNot only that, but in this case, given that we don't have a theory of Quantum Gravity yet, the notion of "what happens" at the singularity is inevitably mystical. The press release is glibly going from "science mode" to "mystical mode" and acting like it's all known by physics, which it's not. (I'm not really complaining ... it's a press release, after all.)
- Bodell 6y agoThat's because the black hole sucked all the information out of it. Haha.
- tyre 6y agoLook, if it gets us phrases like “… where density is infinite and time ends.” then I’m here for them. I cannot wrap my mind around what it means, but it’s a savage description.
- sharpneli 6y agoNon poetic but hopefully bit more understandable explanation of what it tries to say: After crossing the event horizon the radial direction becomes like time. And what used to be time becomes like space. What this means that you will inevitably travel to the center, just in the same way as you travel into the future in normal life. Inside the event horizon the center is not at any place that you can see, instead it is in your future.
- psychoslave 6y agoTo be fair, the universe will never confront you to such a puzzling situation, as it will kindly squash you under heavy gravity before you come close to any object so massive.
- kryptiskt 6y agoNot necessarily, a supermassive black hole can have quite bearable gravity at the event horizon (as the event horizon radius depends linearly on the mass and the gravity declines quadratically with distance). You still wouldn't be able to communicate your experiences though.
- ckosidows 6y agoDoesn't an event horizon imply a gravitational pull so strong not even light can escape? Isn't the effect of gravity the same at the event horizon for all sizes of a black hole? I thought the size only affected the "acceleration" of the gravitational pull based on the distance from the singularity? A supermassive black hole means you will take longer to be spaghettified, but it will still happen and it will happen before you cross the horizon, won't it?
- radioactivist 6y agoA uniform force doesn't do anything harmful to you. You get stretched into spaghetti by the difference in force between the ends of your body. In large black holes that difference can be small even as you pass through the horizon (where the total force is large).
- uHuge 6y agoThat is a misunderstanding and a simplistic depiction of the inner structure inside the event horizon sphere. True is we have no observations of the internals but time ending is in contradiction to the cones of particles ejected from the "hole", observed by astronomers.
- Sharlin 6y agoBlack hole jets do not originate from beyond the event horizon. They are made of matter in the accretion disk surrounding the black hole that spirals inward but is deflected and ejected by the black hole's magnetic field.
- tannhaeuser 6y agoWorth noting that the "BH so massive even light can't escape" meme, a staple of popular science, wouldn't make sense since photons don't have mass. What's happening is that space is skewed (according to Schwarzschild if I got it right). It can be better groked with a modern depiction of a BH such as in eg "Interstellar" where the far end of the accretion disk is observed as a second disk.
- Sharlin 6y agoLight has mass-energy, and mass-energy both affects and is affected by the gravitational field. Indeed it is theoretically possible to make a black hole out of nothing but photons [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelblitz_(astrophysics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelblitz_(astrophysics)
- tzs 6y ago> Worth noting that the "BH so massive even light can't escape" meme, a staple of popular science, wouldn't make sense since photons don't have mass. Even worse, it is frequently explained with an analogy to escape velocity. You have a certain escape velocity at the surface of the Moon, the analogy starts, and your rocket needs to exceed that to get out. Gravity is stronger at the surface of Earth, so escape velocity there is higher, and rockets need to go even faster. At the event horizon, gravity is strong enough that escape velocity is the speed of light, and so nothing can get out because you can't go faster than light. Great--except the escape velocity thing only applies to trying to get out ballistically. (Current rockets are essentially ballistic because they expend most of their fuel while still deep in Earth's gravity well). Escape velocity explains why someone inside the event horizon can't throw things out of the black hole using a catapult, or using a rocket that expends all its fuel before reaching the event horizon. It doesn't explain why something with continuous thrust could not get out. It doesn't explain why someone inside couldn't build a ladder that extends past the event horizon and simply climb out. It doesn't explain why someone outside could not lower a tether in and pull someone out.
- baxtr 6y agoI wonder what happens if you inject parts of that into GPT-3... maybe we solve some mysteries with that
- me_me_me 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mht-1c4wc0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mht-1c4wc0Q I hope it helps. I think this is the cleanest explanation with actual visual representation. Edit: Sorry this one is even better. How Time Becomes Space Inside a Black Hole | Space Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KePNhUJ2reI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KePNhUJ2reI
- T-A 6y agoHere's a simple explanation, with pictures: http://visualrelativity.com/LIGHTCONE/schwarzschild.html http://visualrelativity.com/LIGHTCONE/schwarzschild.html And here's a more technical one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_diagram#Black_holes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_diagram#Black_holes
- gizmo686 6y agoIn some sense, nothing particuarly interesting happens at the event horizon of a black hole. For a sufficiently large black hole, the space at the event horizon is essentially flat [0]. The time and space swapping weirdness is entirely an artifact of the coordinate system being used. If you think of spacetime as a 4 dimensional geometry, there is no particularly reason to pick out any specific shape of the "time" coordinate. For a given interval in space-time, there is notion of "proper time" that is invariant to coordinate system transformations, so a given observer does have an "ideal" coordinate to use for time. The "proper time" of a given observer could be the space axis of another coordinate system. Assuming you have enough background in math, what I think is a reasonably understandable explanation is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be&list=PLpGHT1n4-mAvcXwzOIz3dHnGZaQP1LEib&t=4090 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be... Once he gets through explaining the hyperbolic coordinate sytstem, you can skip ahead to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be&list=PLpGHT1n4-mAvcXwzOIz3dHnGZaQP1LEib&t=5247 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be... Space is time line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be&list=PLpGHT1n4-mAvcXwzOIz3dHnGZaQP1LEib&t=5478 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be... A somewhat clarifying picture of it taking "infinite" time to cross the event horizon, without anything interesting happening near the event horizon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be&list=PLpGHT1n4-mAvcXwzOIz3dHnGZaQP1LEib&t=5767 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv2-KPagCQs&feature=youtu.be... [0] As with any gravitational object, there are tidal forces. However, due to the increasing radius of the event horizon, the strength of the tidal forces at the event horizon decrease as the mass of the blackhole increases.
- pfortuny 6y agoI cannot but disagree with you on Eliot. It is a christian image and he is talking about God’s view of History. The waste land is at times gibberish, though, in his own words.
- potiuper 6y agoThe PR seems like a double dig on Hawking. "Nothing, not even light, can escape." except Hawking radiation?
- SiempreViernes 6y agoHawking radiation is emitted from the outside, if you start beyond the barrier it's usually not counted as an escape.
- melling 6y agoi thought that a black hole could eventually disappear through Hawking radiation. Eventually being a really long time.
- pas 6y agoYes, it could, and yes, it theoretically [in some models] contains/radiates information. But the "radiation" happens right at the event horizon, the particles that get emerge have been "created" on the outer side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT_iZ7QEit8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT_iZ7QEit8
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoThis seems as good a place as any to ask: when the particle-antiparticle pairs are made at the event horizon, one falls in, the other is emitted as radiation. Why don't the p & ap produced then pair up with and annihilate with other ap and p created in the vicinity such that it wouldn't really be detectable over ordinary vacuum activity. This could happen both inside and outside the horizon. It seems like Hawking radiation (if I've understood correctly) could be produced but would be almost impossible to detect as it would all annihilate immediately? What have I missed?
- a1369209993 6y agoThe particle []or[] antiparticle (only one avoids falling in) produced usually does pair up and annihilate with another (anti)particle, but that happens above the event horizon, so the photon resulting from that annihilation sometimes is pointed away from black hole and escapes. It's only very small black holes where the pair-production particles themselves have sufficient height and speed to escape.
- pvitz 6y agoIt looks like Hawking missed the Nobel prize by two years then. This is almost the same like with Fischer Black.
- sleavey 6y agoRon Drever also missed out on the Nobel prize for the discovery of gravitational waves by about 6 months [1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39212305 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39212305
- tzs 6y agoHawking could joke about it. From one of his guest appearances on "The Big Bang Theory", where Sheldon is having some issues when a rival has outclassed him, and Leonard brings in Hawking to have a talk with Sheldon: Stephen Hawking : I understand you're struggling with professional jealousy. Sheldon Cooper : Thanks, Leonard, now he's not going to think I'm cool. Stephen Hawking : Don't worry. I know how you feel. I have never won a Nobel prize. Penny : Oh, wow, that doesn't seem fair. Stephen Hawking : It's fine. I've been on The Simpsons. Sheldon Cooper : How do you deal with the success of your colleagues? Stephen Hawking : I remind myself every scientific advancement is a victory. Also, I was on Star Trek. The first meeting between Hawking and Cooper was pretty funny. Hawking couldn't make very much in the way of facial expressions, but you could tell he was having a good time [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlrOKpQ6UBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlrOKpQ6UBI
- tobinfricke 6y agoImpossible not to read this in "his" voice, in which he was so good at expressing this sort of wit.
- otalp 6y agoWould Hawking have got it with them?
- SiempreViernes 6y agoNot sure, he's most famous for work on black hole thermodynamics, not really about formation.
- kdavis 6y agoYes. Penrose’s prize is largely for the Penrose-Hawking Theorems[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose–Hawking_singularity_theorems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose–Hawking_singularity_th...
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- codethief 6y agoWhat I don't understand is this: The Singularity Theorems already assume the existence of a trapped surface (and by implication, of a marginally outer trapped surface, i.e. an apparent horizon, i.e. a black hole) and then conclude that there must be a singularity inside. Experimentally, though, we know absolutely nothing about this and the recent black hole-related discoveries (gravitational waves, Event Horizon Telescope) can certainly not be seen as a proof of the existence of singularities, either. Now the Nobel Prize committee says that the discovery is actually > “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.” But this has virtually nothing to do with the most famous piece of work by Penrose, i.e. the Singularity Theorems.
- cb321 6y agoI believe your point is valid. If the universe ends in big crunch there may also be insufficient proper time to form a singularity. People often confuse event horizons for singularities, partly because of Penrose's work. :) I think Penrose has made many contributions worthy of recognition, though I am not sure Nobel committee press releases are the best place to look for them.
- google234123 6y agoIt's too bad that Stephen Hawking is dead. He also deserved to be on this list.
- jb1991 6y ago> Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist Wow.
- immmmmm 6y agoEinstein did not believe in gravitational waves either. He also famously added the cosmological constant because he didn't like the idea of an expanding universe.
- pacman128 6y agoDo you have a source for this? I thought they were a direct prediction of GR and this link says the same: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw
- auntienomen 6y agoYou can read about it in Abraham Pais' scientific biography of Einstein, _Subtle is the Lord_.
- pacman128 6y agoI don't have a copy of that book, but the abstract of this paper from 1937, co-authored by Einstein, claims that gravitational waves are a prediction of GR: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016003237905830 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00160...
- T-A 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bead_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bead_argument
- Metacelsus 6y agoWow, I didn't realize Penrose hadn't won one already. He clearly deserves it!
- surajs 6y agobetter late than never
- wrycoder 6y agoIt's too bad that Wheeler didn't live long enough to share it.
- GuB-42 6y agoTheoretical physicists are less and less likely to receive Nobel prizes during their lifetime. It took 50 years for Higgs to get his. Nobel prizes reward experimentally verified discoveries and I suspect the direct observation of a black hole is what finally got Penrose his Nobel. But discoveries like Hawking radiation didn't result in a Nobel prize because even though it is a well accepted idea among physicists, it hasn't been observed yet. As theories predict things that require more and more extreme conditions and precise instruments, the time between theory and experimental validation gets longer and longer.
- fsnowdin 6y agoI thought we already knew there was a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way for a while now? What specifically did Genzel and Ghez do to expand on that knowledge? I'm curious to know.
- stargazer-3 6y agoBack in the day they each led research to detect irrefutable evidence of it. This isn't anything new and groundbreaking.
- xioxox 6y agoI think that's rather unfair. The measurements are still ongoing with ever-increasing accuracy. In 2018 they managed to record the closest approach of the star S2, measuring a velocity of 7000 km/s at its maximum. This was after mapping the full 16 year orbit. I know that Genzel is still actively researching this topic with his group, see e.g. https://www.mpe.mpg.de/7433286/news20200416 https://www.mpe.mpg.de/7433286/news20200416
- ISL 6y agoGhez is very active. Both her group and Genzel's group are at the very leading edge. I haven't found an updated GIF, but even when I first saw images like this around 2002, it was clear she was chasing something awesome. https://www.physicscentral.com/explore/people/images/2008orbits_animfull.gif https://www.physicscentral.com/explore/people/images/2008orb...
- stargazer-3 6y agoThat is true, but the prize was awarded to Genzel for “for the __discovery__ of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy” (emphasis mine), not for the (impressive no doubt) follow-up work, so my comment was done in that context. That being said, I should have been a bit more enthusiastic about the infrared group's work to not appear dismissive on their ongoing contribution. Fun fact: looks like we're both in MPE (although I left two years ago).
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- tegeek 6y agoWhat is more poetic than a mathematical model of a black hole? Look at this A "finished" black hole (The end state of the gravitational collapse) doesn't have a volume or any density. This is the mathematical solution first obtained by Schwarzschild in 1916. So standard mathematical solutions of the black holes are vacuum solutions. There is "nothingness" inside the event horizon. The outside observer would see a collapsing sphere of dust, but over time, as the radius of the sphere approaches the (yet to form) event horizon, gravitational time dilation makes everything appear increasingly in slow motion. The actual moment of horizon formation is never seen, it remains forever in the future for the outside observer. For the in falling observer, the situation is different. The moment once the horizon is crossed, there is no escape. The observer will find himself inside an ever shrinking “universe” of dust everywhere. The singularity is an unavoidable future moment in time, when the density of this “universe” becomes divergent and time itself comes to an end. So there you've a vacuum. A "universe" of vacuum everywhere where there is no time exists.
- simiones 6y agoYou shouldn't forget that, since the mathematical equations have a singularity at the center of a black hole, we can be reasonably sure that they are in fact incomplete and can't accurately describe the internal structure of a black hole. So, take any such description with a grain of salt. It's much more correct to say that our current models can't accurately predict what is happening past the event horizon of a black hole.
- tegeek 6y agoFirst there is nothing called center of a blackhole. What mathematics tells us is exactly what is a black hole. After crossing the event horizon, there is no time so there is no "information" exists. Its the end of "everything" which I wrote "nothingness". Thats what is in the black hole. Thats the structure.
- gizmo686 6y agoThere is very much time after crossing the event. It happens to not correspond to the "t" coordinate that a distant observer would call time, but it still exists. The mathematics describes 2 singularities with black holes. 1 singularity occurs when describing the black hole using the coordinate system of an observer at constant distance. This is a coordinate singularity and goes away under an appropriate change of coordinates. Another singularity occurs at what the constant distance observer would describe as the "center" of the black hole. This is not a coordinate singularity. The curvature there goes infinite regardless of your coordinate system. Whether or not you want to call this singularity the "center" is a matter of opinion. An observer within the event horizon would describe the singularity as a time, not a location, so "center" certainly has some connotations that you may want to avoid. On the other hand. In the coordinate system that I normally see used to describe the interior of black holes, the singularity occurs at the surface r=0; which sounds kind of center-ish.
- codebolt 6y agoSuch a joy to see Sir Roger Penrose awarded with this honor. One of my favorite contemporary intellectuals. If anyone hasn't seen it, I recommend his recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0
- wenc 6y agoI somehow always had the impression that Roger Penrose was a numerical computation guy (Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse). I did not realize he had this vast of scope of a contributions in physics. Certainly quite impressive.
- melling 6y agoHe has also written a few books. https://www.amazon.com/Roger-Penrose/e/B000AQ045A%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share https://www.amazon.com/Roger-Penrose/e/B000AQ045A%3Fref=dbs_...
- mongol 6y agoHas anyone read his writings on consciousness? When I was young and still believed in free will I imagined that consciousness used quantum mechanics as a way to generate free will. I later learned that Penrose had theories that sounded similar. But have not read about it.
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- petters 6y agoHere is an interesting discussion of this work by physicists: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2756 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2756
- codebolt 6y agoI've read both. The first was the most impactful to me personally. The way he uses Gödels theorems to argue against the computability of consciousness is actually quite ingenious and it's presented in such a straightforward way that I could easily grasp it from first principles. I also find the criticisms I've seen against it to be knee-jerkish and flimsy. Orch OR seems like a shot in the dark, and while certainly an interesting thought experiment I'd like to see more evidence before I buy in to it.
- A_No_Name_Mouse 6y agoVery much deserved, but why does it take so long to award this prize? Clearly they could have valued this research 20 years ago?
- nmlnn 6y agoThe black hole "observation" only happened a year or two ago, no?
- mikhailfranco 6y agoThe Nobel is awarded for actual experimental discoveries and validation of theories, not just unproven theoretical speculation. Weinberg, Glashow, Salaam (1979) were theoreticians, but their theories for electroweak unification had been validated in many experiments during the 1970's, especially weak neutral currents at CERN in 1973. Higgs & Englert (2013) had to wait for 50 years for their theory to be validated. The ATLAS & CMS experimentalists who discovered the Higgs particle were passed over, but they outnumbered them ~1,000:1, and only up to 3 people are allowed to get the prize in one year. https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-a-nobel-the-cern-physicists-who-discovered-the-higgs-boson/ https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-a-nobel-the-cern-p... https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2013/oct/08/nobel-higgs-boson-experimenters https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2013/oc... However, Rubbia & van der Meer (1984) got the prize for discovering the W and Z (ultimate proof of electroweak unification) on behalf of the large CERN SPS collaboration.
- keithnz 6y agoI read his book "the emperors new mind" in 1990, which is a fantastic book. It has a great section on computability.
- vishnugupta 6y agoI'm not a physicist but have been reading up on this topic (gravity, general relativity etc.,). Could someone please ELI5 to me why hasn't Schwarzschild been awarded Nobel prize? I read that his work played a big role in discovery of Black Hole and the concept in general. Heck, his name even appears no less than 19 times in the Nobel Committee's article [1]!! [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/advanced-physicsprize2020.pdf https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/advanced-physicsp...
- cmogni1 6y agoNobels are not awarded posthumously, and he died in WWI. On that subject, “Einstein’s War” is an interesting read on the interplay between WWI and the development of general relativity.
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- sega_sai 6y agoAt the time of Schwarzschild, black holes were only a purely theoretical concept. We only started to get evidence that they exist in the 80s and later.
- codethief 6y agoSpeaking of Karl Schwarzschild, here's an interesting tidbit that, in my experience, few non-German speakers know: The literal translation of "Schwarzschild" (or "schwarzer Schild") to English would be "black shield". So him discovering the first black hole spacetime was certainly very appropriate! :) (Similarly, I was very happy when I first heard about the Poynting vector [0] which, roughly speaking, indicates the direction in which an electromagnetic wave travels.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector
- imranq 6y agoRoger Penrose! If there’s anyone I could think of who deserves the prize, it would be him
- animationwill 6y ago> Roger Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Where can I learn more about these ingenious math models in a way that an adult can understand, but one that's been out of math for a while? Is there a good YouTube video? I'm searching but it's coming up with many hour-long lectures by Roger Penrose that seem unrelated to the specifics of thise prize
- auntienomen 6y agoYou're looking for lectures on the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. I don't know if there are any videos about them, but at least knowing the name should help you search.
- thisrod 6y ago> an adult can understand, but one that's been out of math for a while? That might not be possible. I remember struggling with the proofs of the singularity theorems, in the last year of my physics degree, after two semesters of differential geometry. Some of the things that people win the Nobel Prize for are genuinely hard. The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time is the classic. However, it's the book that Hawking was referring to in his joke about every equation halving the sales.
- ArtWomb 6y agoCongrats! Am so happy that Penrose lived long enough to be able to see an actual movie of a black hole ;) Monitoring the Morphology of M87* in 2009-2017 with the Event Horizon Telescope https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11842 https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.11842 And when all is said and done I believe his insights into the Quantum Correlates of Human Consciousness may end up being the most fruitful Consciousness in the Universe: Neuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory https://web.archive.org/web/20120616045402/http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/Cosmology160.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120616045402/http://www.quantu...
- musgravepeter 6y agoPenrose's contribution is reviewed in https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.5226 https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.5226
- rurban 6y agoReminds me on Einstein getting the nobel for only a minor achievement, whilst his big one, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_interpretation is still waiting to be verified. A proper GUT finally.
- T-A 6y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-1008-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-1008-4 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/one-quantum-physics-greatest-paradoxes-may-have-lost-its-leading-explanation https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/one-quantum-physics-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401462
- biswaroop 6y agoI'm elated that Andrea Ghez won!! She came to talk at my high school in 2007, and sparked a lot of my interest in astrophysics. Highly deserved. Here's something closely related to her research that always blows my mind: A video of stars orbiting Sag A*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0QRpid5_QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0QRpid5_QU
- petters 6y agoAmazing that this video is not more widely known! Thanks
- khy 6y agoWhy do they specify that two of them split only half of the prize, versus just that all three share it? Does anyone care _how much_ of a Nobel prize you have?
- abdullahkhalids 6y agoThey are saying that RP's theoretical contributions are equal to the experimental contributions of the other two.
- harryposner 6y agoA Nobel Prize is about a million dollars cash.
- khy 6y agoAh, they split the cash along those lines? I see.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThink of it as the price is shared between two discoveries, and for each discovery a certain number of people share that part.
- JackFr 6y agoIt's funny when you know of a scientist and their work, but years later you find out what you knew them for isn't what they did best or what they're famous for... I only knew Penrose from Penrose tilings and as the author of The Emporer's New Mind. Black holes? Who knew.
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- KingFelix 6y agoHe was Stephen Hawkings Teacher!
- elorant 6y agoPenrose has written the best science book I've ever read. "The Road to Reality". I read it some ten years ago, and it renewed my interest in physics. I must have read at least three dozen of the books in its bibliography since.
- nabla9 6y agoAnimation of the Stellar Orbits around the Sagittarius A* black hole (based on real data) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZhUQl-wmq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZhUQl-wmq0
- rodiger 6y agoGenuine question: Do they ever not give a nobel prize? Have there been years where no significant progress was made?
- Domenic_S 6y agoSince the start, in 1901, there are some years when the Nobel Prizes have not been awarded. The total number of times are 49. Most of them during World War I (1914-1918) and II (1939-1945). In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says: “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.”. Physics: 1916, 1931, 1934, 1940, 1941, 1942 Chemistry: 1916, 1917, 1919, 1924, 1933, 1940, 1941, 1942 Medicine: 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1921, 1925, 1940, 1941, 1942 Literature: 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 Peace: 1914, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1948, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, 1972 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/nobel-prize-facts/#:~:text=Years%20without%20Nobel%20Prizes&text=Since%20the%20start%2C%20in%201901,II%20(1939%2D1945) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/nobel-prize-facts/#:....
- tobinfricke 6y agoThe science prizes are typically for work done decades previously that have stood the test of time.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoHow do we know our entire visible universe isn’t at the event horizon of a larger black hole?
- hi41 6y agoCan someone please provide the link to Roger Penrose’s ground breaking article about black hole.