STOCKHOLM, October 6. /TASS/. The Nobel Prize in physics this year has been awarded to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their research on black hole formation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday.

As the Nobel Committee for Physics’ statement said, Penrose was awarded "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity." Genzel and Ghez became laureates for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of the galaxy.

According to the committee, the scientists share this year’s prize "for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole." "Roger Penrose showed that the general theory of relativity leads to the formation of black holes. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez 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 statement noted.

"The discoveries of this year’s Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole," chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics David Haviland explained.

The press conference where the names of the laureates were announced started late. As Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, explained, there had been a delay in contacting the winners. He announced the committee’s decision in Swedish, English, German, French and Russian.