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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

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Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#121

Post by tobinfricke »

tzs wrote: post #106
pvitz wrote: post #3

It looks like Hawking missed the Nobel prize by two years then. This is almost the same like with Fischer Black.

Hawking 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…

Impossible not to read this in "his" voice, in which he was so good at expressing this sort of wit.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#123

Post by pacman128 »

auntienomen wrote: post #88
pacman128 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do 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

You can read about it in Abraham Pais' scientific biography of Einstein, _Subtle is the Lord_.

I 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/S00160...

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#124

Post by ThomasBHickey »

melling wrote: post #74
wenc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

He has also written a few books. https://www.amazon.com/Roger-Penrose/e/B000AQ045A%3Fref=dbs_...

Another list: https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n82139094/

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#125

Post by tyre »

konschubert wrote: post #12
frereubu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’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.

Look, 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.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#126

Post by codethief »

vishnugupta wrote: post #51

I'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-ph…

Speaking 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

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#127

Post by codethief »

kdavis wrote: post #18
otalp wrote: post #4

Would Hawking have got it with them?

Yes. Penrose’s prize is largely for the Penrose-Hawking Theorems[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose–Hawking_singularity_th...

What 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.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#128

Post by T-A »

pacman128 wrote: post #43
immmmmm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein 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.

Do 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bead_argument

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#129

Post by ecoled_ame »

codebolt wrote: post #40

Such 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

Now we’ve got to listen to his Orch OR theory about how microtubules are quantum computers of consciousness! as a biologist I’m so excited for this theory to catch on and refine our notions of neuronal information processing beyond synaptic theory.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020

#130

Post by TeMPOraL »

tegeek wrote: post #39

What 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 col…

> 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.

Makes me wonder. We used to believe that it's possible for our universe to eventually collapse, reversing the Big Bang in a Big Crunch. From what I recall, current evidence points against it, but if we were to live in such a universe doomed to a collapse - wouldn't that mean we'd be living in a universe-sized black hole?

(A black metahole if you like.)

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