Understanding the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics
From the pioneering theoretical work on black holes, to observing the galactic center of our Milky Way.
Erin Wells Bonning (Emory) and Predrag Cvitanović (Georgia Tech)
November 11th, 2020
A half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roger Penrose, for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. In 1957 Penrose, then a graduate student, met Georgia Tech’s late David Ritz Finkelstein in a fateful meeting that changed both men’s lives forever after. It was Finkelstein’s extension of the Schwarzschild metric which provided Penrose with an opening into general relativity and set him on the path to his 1965 discovery celebrated by this year’s prize.
A half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for the discovery of –in Ghez’s words- "The Monster at the heart of the Milky Way," a black hole whose existence had been hypothesized since the early 1970s. In order to visually observe an object that famously does not emit any light, precise measurements of stars moving in the black hole’s gravitational field had to be carried out. The independent work of Genzel and Ghez mapping the positions of these stars over many years has led to the clearest evidence yet that the center of our Milky Way galaxy contains “The Monster”, that possibly every galaxy contains a black hole, and that the environment near it looks nothing like what was expected.
About the lecture:
https://cos.gatech.edu/events/underst...
Learn more:
https://cos.gatech.edu/news/2020-nobe...
Andrea Ghez: “The Monster at the Heart of our Galaxy” • Prof. Andrea Ghez: "The Monster at th...
Veritasium: “The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats” • The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats
also a part of:
Georgia Tech PHYS-6124 Mathematical methods of physics week 12
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Instructor: Predrag Cvitanović
ChaosBook.org/~predrag/courses/PHYS-6124-20
Aug 18 to Nov 24 2020
• Math Methods - GaTech PHYS-6124
PhysicsNobel2020.mp4