Watch Again: Are we seeing Hawking Points in the CMB Sky? by Sir Roger Penrose, 2020 Nobel Prize Winner

Sir Roger Penrose has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on showing the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes.

He shares the prize with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, who discovered that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy.

A supermassive black hole is the only currently known explanation.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made the announcement on Tuesday, setting out that Sir Roger would take home half of the 10 million Swedish kronor (£864,000) prize, with the other two winners splitting the other half.

On 10th December 2018, IEEE UK and Ireland Section was honoured to have Sir Roger Penrose deliver its annual Christmas Lecture.

Over 100 members gathered at the University of Westminster to hear introductions by Vice Chancellor, Peter Bonfield and Section Chair, Mike Hinchey before Sir Roger took to the stage.

His lecture was entitled “Are we seeing Hawking Points in the CMB Sky?” and gave a fascinating insight into his most recent work on the cosmic microwave background.

Professor Sir Roger Penrose’s work has been a major factor in understanding black holes, having been knighted in 1994 for his services to science. He has received several awards, including the 1975 Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society jointly awarded to Stephen Hawking, and the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, shared with Hawking for the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems.

Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. In 2010, he reported possible evidence of an earlier universe prior to the Big Bang of our own current universe in his book Cycles of Time.

Hosting Professor Sir Roger Penrose as our Christmas Lecture speaker was a great achievement for us all, as we hosted one of the greatest scientist of modern times. It was a true honour and an inspiration to meet this living legend and to listen to his lecture from his beautifully illustrated hand drawn slides.

The event was webcast live from the Regent Street Cinema, at the University of Westminster and can be viewed again below.