Wow, I didn't realize Penrose hadn't won one already. He clearly deserves it!
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
11–20 of 153 posts
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#12The 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…
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.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#13The 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…
Non 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.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#14The 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…
That 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.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#15The 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…
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. 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.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#16I 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.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#17> Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist Wow.
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.
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#18Would 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...
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#19Wow, I didn't realize Penrose hadn't won one already. He clearly deserves it!
better late than never
Re: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020
#20The 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…
I wonder what happens if you inject parts of that into GPT-3... maybe we solve some mysteries with that