Press Release
TMT Scientist Andrea Ghez Awarded the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Crafoord Prize in Astronomy 2012
01.19.2012
SWEDEN, Jan. 19, 2012 /adapted from RSAS press release/ -- The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy 2012 to TMT scientist Andrea Ghez, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, and Reinhard Genzel, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany “for their observations of the stars orbiting the galactic centre, indicating the presence of a supermassive black hole".
This year´s Crafoord Prize Laureates have found the most reliable evidence to date that supermassive black holes really exist. For decades Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, with their research teams, have tracked stars around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Separately, they both arrived at the same conclusion: in our home galaxy resides a giant black hole called Sagittarius A*. From the motions of stars around the centre of the Milky Way, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, and their colleagues, estimated the mass of Sagittarius A* at nearly four million times solar masses. Sagittarius A* is our closest supermassive black hole. It allows astronomers to better investigate gravity and explore the limitations of the theory of relativity.
For more information, see the press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.