Black holes and DNA scissors: for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2020 was divided into two parts. One half went to the British Roger Penrose, who proved the possibility of the existence of black holes. The second goes to University of California professors Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Gaz, who discovered one of these holes in the center of our Galaxy, writes Air force.

Photo: Shutterstock

To be completely precise, the decision of the Nobel Committee said that Genzel and Gaz discovered a “supermassive compact object” located in the center of the Milky Way. Scientists are still not sure that this is a black hole - they simply have no other explanation.

This is the essence of the fundamental discoveries awarded the highest award of the scientific world.

The physical properties of black holes are so different from what we are used to seeing around us that even the scientists themselves, who predicted the existence of such objects, could not fully believe in their existence.

Oxford professor Roger Penrose was the first to prove that black holes not only can exist, but in a Universe governed by the theory of relativity, their formation is simply inevitable.

And two groups of scientists led by Reinhard Gentzel and Andrea Gez discovered such an object in the center of our Galaxy. Independently of each other, they managed to prove that there is an incredibly massive object invisible to instruments.

It is around it that the Milky Way revolves - with all the billions of stars included in it. Including our Sun, and therefore you and me.

On the subject: Insidious 'affectionate killer': for which they gave the Nobel Prize in medicine

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2020 was awarded to Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and American Jennifer Doudna, who work in Berlin, for developing a method for genome editing, informally called “genetic scissors,” says Air force.

Charpentier, 51, and Doudna, 56, are only the sixth and seventh Nobel Prize winners in chemistry overall (out of 168 male laureates). This year, the award was shared by two women for the first time.

As stated in the decision of the Nobel Committee, the CRISPR-Cas9 technology they created has made a real revolution in biology and medicine. It is already being used to treat cancer patients, and in the future, it may make it possible to forget about hereditary diseases forever.

Any living organism consists of cells, in each of which DNA is coiled into a ball - a double helix of the genetic year.

In humans, this spiral is a chain of information six billion links long (to be precise, two chains of 3 billion each), accumulated by our ancestors over hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

The “scissors” invented by Charpentier and Doudna make it possible to cut the desired fragment from this chain. After the operation, the removed links can be replaced with a “patch” by inserting another genetic code in their place, or you can simply “stitch” the DNA back - as if nothing was there.

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