(6 Oct 2020) As a 4-year-old in Chicago, Andrea Ghez, this year's co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, was turned on to science by the moon landings.
"I really remember just being fascinated that people could be out there," Ghez, now 55, said.
But at first, Ghez went to college as a math major - math being central to Penrose's half of the physics prize - because the concept of infinity fascinated her.
Because time slows and even stops in these black holes, Ghez is still studying infinity.
And that's what Ghez said she finds so fascinating about black holes.
"You get this mixing of space and time," Ghez said, adding of course that makes it so hard to understand.
"Black holes, because they are so hard to understand, is what makes them so appealing,'' Ghez told The Associated Press on Tuesday morning.
Ghez is the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963, and Donna Strickland in 2018.
Three scientists won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for advancing our understanding of black holes, the all-consuming monsters that lurk in the darkest parts of the universe.
Briton Roger Penrose received half of this year’s prize “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity," the Nobel Committee said.
German Reinhard Genzel and Ghez received the second half of the prize “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy."
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
