Black Hole Discoveries Win 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics

Britain's Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and US scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics. (AP)
Britain's Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and US scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics. (AP)
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Black Hole Discoveries Win 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics

Britain's Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and US scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics. (AP)
Britain's Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and US scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics. (AP)

Britain's Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel of Germany and US scientist Andrea Ghez won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discoveries about one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe, the black hole, the award-giving body said on Tuesday.

Penrose, professor at the University of Oxford, won half the prize for his work using mathematics to prove that black holes are a direct consequence of the general theory of relativity.

Genzel, of the Max Planck Institute and University of California, Berkeley, and Ghez, at the University of California, Los Angeles, shared the other half for discovering that an invisible and extremely heavy object governs the orbits of stars at the center of our galaxy.

Physics is the second of this year's crop of Nobels to be awarded, after three scientists won the medicine prize for their discovery of Hepatitis C on Monday.

Among the Nobel prizes, physics has often dominated the spotlight with past awards going to scientific superstars such as Albert Einstein for fundamental discoveries about the make-up of the universe, including the general theory of relativity.

"The discoveries of this year's Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects," David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said on awarding the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize.

"But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research."

Ghez is only the fourth woman to win the physics prize, after Marie Curie in 1903, Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 and Donna Strickland in 2018.

The Nobel prizes were created in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.

This year's awards occur under the long shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic that has curtailed much of the usual festivities surrounding the prizes and sent the scientific world racing to develop a vaccine and treatment.



OpenAI Unveils ChatGPT Agent to Handle Tasks as AI Apps Evolve

The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)
The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)
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OpenAI Unveils ChatGPT Agent to Handle Tasks as AI Apps Evolve

The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)
The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. (AP)

OpenAI launched an artificial intelligence agent for its popular chatbot ChatGPT on Thursday that can complete complex tasks as the Microsoft-backed startup looks to get ahead of competitors in the AI race.

AI agents — considered to be an evolution of an assistant — have been embraced across the tech world with large firms, including Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, spending billions on the technology to boost productivity and make operations more cost efficient.

OpenAI's agent will combine aspects of its previous agentic features, operator, which can interact with websites, and deep research that can conduct multi-step research for advanced tasks.

Starting Thursday, users of ChatGPT's Pro, Plus and Team tiers can activate the chatbot's agentic capabilities.

ChatGPT's agent can complete tasks such as ordering an outfit for a wedding while taking into account factors like dress code and weather.

The chatbot does this by using its own virtual computer equipped with a number of tools that can interact with the web. It also allows the user to connect apps such as Gmail and Github so ChatGPT can find information relevant to a prompt.