[ti:Three Scientists Win Nobel Physics Prize for Black Hole Research] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Three scientists have won the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics [00:05.48]for their discoveries related to massive objects called black holes. [00:12.52]The Royal Swedish Academy of Science said Tuesday [00:16.68]it will give half of the $1.1 million prize [00:21.00]to Roger Penrose of Britain's University of Oxford. [00:26.64]It is recognizing his use of mathematics to prove that black holes [00:31.88]are a direct result of "Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity." [00:39.00]Germany's Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez of the United States [00:44.12]will share the other half of the physics prize. [00:49.00]Genzel works at both the Max Planck Institute in Germany [00:53.52]and the University of California, Berkeley. [00:58.68]Ghez is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy [01:02.96]with the University of California, Los Angeles. [01:08.16]The academy is recognizing the two scientists [01:11.84]"for the discovery of a supermassive compact object [01:16.08]at the center of our galaxy." [01:19.52]That object was a large black hole. [01:24.08]The physics prize celebrates what the Nobel Committee called [01:28.40]"one of the most exotic objects in the universe." [01:34.08]Black holes might exist at the center of every galaxy. [01:39.08]Galaxies are huge systems that contain billions of stars. [01:45.16]Smaller black holes can be found around the universe. [01:50.36]Nothing, not even light, can escape their gravity. [01:56.04]Time comes to a halt as it gets closer. [02:01.32]"Black holes, because they are so hard to understand, [02:05.24]is what makes them so appealing," Ghez told The Associated Press. [02:11.08]"I really think of science as a big, giant puzzle." [02:16.80]"You get this mixing of space and time," she said, [02:20.60]adding that is what makes black holes so hard to understand. [02:26.44]Penrose proved with math that the formation of black holes was possible. [02:32.84]His work was based heavily on Einstein's general theory of relativity. [02:39.80]"Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist, [02:44.92]these super-heavyweight monsters that capture everything that enters them," [02:50.44]the Nobel Committee said. "Nothing can escape, not even light." [02:56.72]British astronomer Martin Rees noted that Penrose's work [03:01.16]fueled a "renaissance" in the study of relativity in the 1960s. [03:07.64]He added that Penrose, together with a young Stephen Hawking, [03:12.28]helped support evidence for the Big Bang and black holes. [03:18.08]"Penrose and Hawking are the two individuals [03:20.84]who have done more than anyone else since Einstein [03:24.56]to deepen our knowledge of gravity," Rees said. [03:30.12]Nobel prizes are only awarded to the living. [03:34.32]Hawking died in 2018. [03:38.40]In the 1990s, Genzel and Ghez were each leading a group of astronomers. [03:45.72]Both groups were interested in the center of our Milky Way galaxy. [03:51.68]They both found that there was "an extremely heavy, invisible object" [03:57.04]that pulls other stars, causing them to move around at high speeds, the committee said. [04:04.80]It was a supermassive black hole 4 million times the mass of our sun. [04:13.24]The first picture Ghez got of the object was in 1995. [04:19.04]The image came from telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory, [04:24.20]which had just gone online. [04:27.80]A year later, another picture appeared to show that the stars [04:32.52]near the center of the Milky Way were moving around something. [04:37.40]A third picture led Ghez and Genzel to think they had discovered something. [04:44.20]Now scientists know that all galaxies have supermassive black holes. [04:52.28]"Today we accept these objects are critical [04:55.48]to the building blocks of the universe," Ghez said. [05:00.12]Ghez is the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. [05:06.48]The others were Marie Curie in 1903, [05:09.88]Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963, and Donna Strickland in 2018. [05:17.80]I'm Jonathan Evans. [05:19.88]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM