07/10/2020

Through mathematics, Roger Penrose wins the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Imagem: Niklas Elmehed/ Reprodução YouTube Nobel Prize

Physicist-mathematician Roger Penrose has joined the select group of researchers recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics. The announcement was made by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday (6). In his award-winning work, the researcher used mathematics to prove that black holes are a direct consequence of the general theory of relativity. In addition to Penrose, German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez also received the award for their significant discoveries about black holes. Andrea was the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics since its creation in 1901. The winners will share the prize of 10 million Swedish kronor (approximately R$ 6.3 million).

Penrose was born in Colchester, United Kingdom. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and, at 89 years old, works as a professor at the University of Oxford. In an interview with the Nobel Prize channel on YouTube , he recounted that the inspiration for his award-winning work came from an everyday event while he was at Berkeley with a colleague.

Imagem: Niklas Elmehed/ Nobel Prize

“We were talking, and when we crossed the street, he stopped talking until we reached the other side. After he left, I had a strange feeling of euphoria. I thought about what could have brought me that joy, and I soon noticed an idea emerging about a collapse reaching a point of no return, without assuming any kind of symmetry. That's what I called a trap surface . This was the key when I returned to my office and began to draft a proof of the collapse theory. The final paper was published in 1965.”

The Nobel committee concluded that the researcher's work "used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Einstein's general theory of relativity."

In mathematics, Penrose stands out for his work on tessellations. In 1975, he exhibited a set consisting of two polygons that form a non-periodic tessellation of the plane. The polygons are called dart and kite, and the two pieces result from cuts of a rhombus or rhombus with internal angles. The non-periodic dart-kite tessellation pattern is named after the researcher responsible for the discovery.

Each Penrose tile individually forms a periodic tessellation, and together they form a rhombus. One rule for forming a Penrose mosaic is to place dots of two different colors at the vertices of the darts and kites, with the convention that only vertices of the same color can coincide.

Penrose tilings are examples of aperiodic tilings, where displacing any tile with these shapes by any finite distance, without rotation, cannot produce the same tile. Even with the lack of translational symmetry, the model studied by the mathematical physicist may have reflection and fivefold rotational symmetry.

Are you curious to understand how Penrose arrived at these discoveries? Check out the video!