Nobel Prize in physics awarded for research on exoplanets and the structure of the universe

Source: Washington Post




A cosmologist who revealed the universe was made mostly of invisible matter and energy and two scientists who detected the first planet orbiting an alien star were jointly awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday.

By studying the afterglow of radiation left over from the universe’s birth, James Peebles of Princeton developed a theoretical framework for the evolution of the cosmos that led to the discovery of dark energy and dark matter — substances that can’t be observed by any scientific instruments but nonetheless comprise 95 percent of the universe.

Fellow laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz revolutionized astronomy, the Nobel Committee said, when in 1995 they announced the discovery of a large, gaseous world circling a star 50 lightyears from our own sun — the very first extrasolar planet around a solar-type star. In the decades since, scientists have found thousands more of these exoplanets, and astronomers now think our universe contains more planets than stars.

“This year’s Nobel laureates in physics have painted a picture of a universe far stranger and more wonderful than we ever could have imagined,” Ulf Danielsson, a Nobel committee member, said at a news conference Tuesday. “Our view of our place in the universe will never be the same again.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/10/08/nobel-prize-physics-awarded-research-exoplanets-structure-universe/