The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
nobelprize.org
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
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Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#2The press release has a popular science background -
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...
The Milky Way - 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...
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#3It looks like Hawking missed the Nobel prize by two years then. This is almost the same like with Fischer Black.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#4Would Hawking have got it with them?
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#5It's too bad that Stephen Hawking is dead. He also deserved to be on this list.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#6It looks like Hawking missed the Nobel prize by two years then. This is almost the same like with Fischer Black.
Ron Drever also missed out on the Nobel prize for the discovery of gravitational waves by about 6 months [1].
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#7> Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist
Wow.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#8Would Hawking have got it with them?
Not sure, he's most famous for work on black hole thermodynamics, not really about formation.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#9The press release has a popular science background - 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... The Milky Way - https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig3-phy-en-milky... Stars closest to the centre of the Milky Way…
An 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.Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#10The press release has a popular science background - 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... The Milky Way - https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2020/10/fig3-phy-en-milky... Stars closest to the centre of the Milky Way…
An 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…
Honestly, "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.