The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 | Proving that the centre of the Milky Way is a BLACK HOLE!

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2020 was awarded to Sir Roger Penrose, Prof. Reinhard Genzel and Prof. Andrea Ghez for their contribution to our understanding of black holes! That’s right, your favourite, MY favourite - BLACK HOLES! They won for figuring out that at the centre of the Milky Way there's a supermassive black hole. I dropped everything to record and edit this video today (RIP my research!) - hope you all enjoy hearing about the news as much as I did! #nobelprize #nobelprize2020 #physics

Interview with Andrea Ghez on the Nobel Prize YouTube channel -    • First reactions | Andrea Ghez, Nobel Prize...  

Penrose & Hawking (1970) - https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1970.0021
Penrose (1965) - https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1...
Eckhart & Genzel (1996) - https://www.nature.com/articles/383415a0
Ghez et al. (2008) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.2870.pdf
Smethurst et al. (2019) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.01355.pdf

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📚 "Space: 10 Things You Should Know": http://bit.ly/SpaceDrBecky

📚 US & Canada version: "Space at the speed of light" (same book, different title): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

📚 German translation "Das kleine Buch vom großen Knall" : https://www.dtv.de/buch/becky-smethur...

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🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive

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The artwork in the background is a scientifically accurate map showing the orbits of more than 18000 asteroids in the Solar System, created by Eleanor Lutz. Find out more and buy one here: https://eleanorlutz.com/mapping-18000...

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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

http://drbecky.uk.com
https://rebeccasmethurst.co.uk