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Submission + - 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Black Holes (nytimes.com)

Raisey-raison writes: The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists for their work on black holes, regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape.

They are Roger Penrose, an Englishman, Reinhard Genzel, a German, and Andrea Ghez, an American. Dr. Penrose proved that “black holes will form whenever the conditions are right,” said Brown University physicist Sylvester Gates, incoming president of the American Physical Society. “It is almost an unstoppable process. That really was an astounding result.”

Working independently, Dr. Genzel and Dr. Ghez, and their teams, have spent the last decades tracking stars and dust clouds whizzing around the center of our galaxy with telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, trying to see if that dark dusty realm does indeed harbor a black hole.

Submission + - 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine (nytimes.com)

Raisey-raison writes: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had “made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.”

“For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population,” the committee said in a statement.

Hepatitis A was transmitted via polluted water or food, while hepatitis B spread through the blood. But doctors and researchers couldn’t explain most bloodborne hepatitis cases. These mysterious cases were especially insidious, because infections often became chronic, which can lead to liver failure and cancer.

Discovery of a third kind of hepatitis virus suddenly explained the source of these infections that were surfacing in baby boomers, many of whom had received blood transfusions, shared needles or were infected through sexual intercourse with someone who was infected.

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