#ROGER PENROSE PLUS#

It is now believed that they exist at the centre of every galaxy the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy is called Sagittarius A with a mass equal to about 4 million suns. Penrose, often described as a mathematician, applied his intellect to showing that this theory implies the existence of Black Holes and, further, that at the centre of each Black Hole there is a singularity, the mathematical entity now a physical reality.Įinstein did not believe in the existence of Black Holes but in 2016 the first direct detection of gravitational waves occurred, the first observation of a Black Hole merger. This theory has been verified by astronomical observations. The theory of General Relativity, invented by Einstein at the begin ning of the twentieth century, involves the notion that the mathematical fabric of spacetime is warped by masses (rather like a flexible, extendable/compressible sheet of graph paper), so a large gravitational force due to a star, for example, warps spacetime, causing light, particle trajectories, etc. Indeed, one might state that they are mathematical entities first and foremost we cannot detect or measure physical singularities. Mathematics is essential in understanding physics but nowhere more so than in fundamental features of the universe such as Black Hole singularities.

These laws, such as the principle of conservation of mass energy, had been held to be valid at all times and all places.

The singularities concerned in Black Holes are regions at which the known ‘laws’ of physics are not valid. they are infinite, yet they are ‘countable’, whereas it can be proved mathematically that the set of ‘real’ numbers (a specific mathematical term including things like the square root of 2) are also infinite but ‘uncountable’. The natural numbers (counting 1,2,3…) etc. In fact, there are different orders of infinity in number theory. Singularities are well-known mathematical entities that are not defined or that lead to infinities, such as the function 1/x as x ap proaches zero. It was in 1965 that Penrose proved that black holes have at their heart a ‘singularity’ in which all the known laws of nature cease, still regarded as the most important contribution to the general theory of relativity since Einstein. According to current astrophysics, they are formed as a neutron star collapses in on itself. Black Holes are called black because they are so dense that their gravity is strong enough to prevent anything, even light, escaping. The image above shows matter ‘falling into’ to a Black Hole. A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.” Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez discovered that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy.

Roger Penrose showed that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes.

“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, of the University of Oxford, was the joint recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics.

#ROGER PENROSE PLUS#

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Roger penrose