2020 Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez

Three scientists won this year's Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for advancing our understanding of black holes.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that Briton Roger Penrose will receive half of this year's prize "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity".Roger Penrose of Britain, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and Andrea Ghez of the US won the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for their research into black holes, the Nobel jury said.

Goran K Hansson, the academy's secretary-general, said German Reinhard Genzel and American Andrea Ghez will receive the second half of the prize "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy." The prizes celebrate "one of the most exotic objects in the universe," black holes, which have become a staple of science fiction and science fact and where time even seems to stand still, Nobel committee scientists said.

Half of the prize went to Penrose for showing "that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes", and the other half went to Genzel and Ghez for discovering "that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the centre of our galaxy," the jury said.