Physics Nobel Awarded for Black Hole Breakthroughs

Author
Natalie Wolchover; Senior Writer/Editor; Quantamagazine
Event type
Description

Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel y Andrea Ghez, galardonados con el premio Nobel de Física,  por sus estudios sobre los agujeros negros.

"Black holes form when matter or energy is packed together densely enough. Just how densely? To form a black hole, Earth would have to shrink into a sphere smaller than a pingpong ball.

Although such tiny black holes might have formed during the Big Bang (these are hypothetical entities known as “primordial black holes,” which might comprise the universe’s missing dark matter), the ones observed in the universe today are larger. They typically form when stars at least 10 times more massive than the sun run out of fuel. With outward radiation pressure no longer able to counteract the inward lurch of gravity, the star’s core inwardly collapses — an event usually accompanied by a dramatic explosion called a supernova."