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Looking Skyward: Nobel Prize for Physics Highlights Research on Black Holes

Illustration: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
An artist's conception of a black hole in space.

In this edition of Looking Skyward, CAI's John Basile talks with Dr. Regina Jorgenson of the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket about the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole. Roger Penrose showed that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.

John Basile is the local host of All Things Considered weekday afternoons and a reporter.