Nobel Prize in Physics: 2019 Winners Made Significant Cosmological Discoveries (cnet.com) 31
The Nobel Prize in physics for 2019 was awarded to three scientists on Tuesday for groundbreaking work on the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in it. From a report: Their discoveries have forever "transformed our ideas about the cosmos" and helped answer fundamental questions about existence, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Half of the award went to James Peebles, a physicist with Princeton University, for developing a theoretical framework that traces the the history of the universe, from the Big Bang to present day. His contributions to the Big Bang model and other work led to insights that just 5% of the universe is known matter -- everything from stars to plants to humans -- and the remaining 95% is unknown dark matter and dark energy. "When I started working in this subject -- I can tell you the date, 1964 -- at the invitation of my mentor, Professor Robert Henry Dicke, I was very uneasy about going into this subject because the experimental observational basis was so modest. ... I just kept going," Peebles said during a news conference, according to Princeton University. "Which particular step did I take? I would be very hard-pressed to say. It's a life's work."
The other half was jointly awarded to Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist with the University of Geneva, and Didier Queloz, an astronomer with the University of Geneva and University of Cambridge, for the first discovery of a planet outside our solar system. In October 1995, the two scientists discovered the first exoplanet in the Milky Way, planet 51 Pegasi b. Since their initial discovery, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been found in our home galaxy, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The other half was jointly awarded to Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist with the University of Geneva, and Didier Queloz, an astronomer with the University of Geneva and University of Cambridge, for the first discovery of a planet outside our solar system. In October 1995, the two scientists discovered the first exoplanet in the Milky Way, planet 51 Pegasi b. Since their initial discovery, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been found in our home galaxy, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
transformed our ideas about the cosmos? (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? More than when we found out the Universe is more than the Milky Way?
"In 1919, when Hooker Telescope was completed, the prevailing view still was that the Universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy."
The modern conception of what we think of the universe is only 100 years old!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Really? More than when we found out the Universe is more than the Milky Way?
Where do you see the word "more" in the summary, other than "more than 4,000 exoplanets"?
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Why do you need to see the word "more"? Are you not able to understand my point?
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Why do you need to see the word "more"? Are you not able to understand my point?
I'm able to understand that you're complaining about something that is irrelevant.
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It's irrelevant that the greatest groundbreaking discovery about the cosmos was done 100 years ago? Who cares about 4000 more exoplanets compared to the realization of the sheer scale of the damn thing?
Read this again: 100 years ago people still thought our *galaxy* WAS the entire universe! People fought WWI just before that!
You want "helped answer fundamental questions about existence"?
How about this: we're ALL irrelevant. How's that?
Re:transformed our ideas about the cosmos? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? More than when we found out the Universe is more than the Milky Way?
Is anybody asserting that? The point is that it transformed our ideas about the cosmos, which is true: before then, we did not know whether there were any planets orbiting other stars. Nobody says that this transformed our ideas about the cosmos more than finding out that the universe is more than the Milky Way.
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They discovered it was bigger, but not genuinely different in nature from what they thought prior. Even the Heliocentric theory was more transformative.
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Wierd (Score:2)
No EmDrive, Warp Drives or Space Factories winners this year. Maybe next year.
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Yeah, we call those people "Americans".
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Re:Dark Matter/Energy is the new Ether (Score:4, Insightful)
So please propose a hypothesis for an idea that can account for these dependencies. Come up with some measures to test that idea. If the data works out, science will consider it.
Dark Matter, and the Big Bang, so far seems to best fit the models. (expansion of the universe and its rate)
Now we can say the universe is infinite, and just stars further out are just naturally more red, and we live on an tiny dot in the universe that is white light. However the red shift is measurable, and able to test. It makes the fact the universe is expanding the simpler theory.
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There's no shame in saying "There simply isn't enough data available to know what is ACTUALLY happening, but if you use this model which assumes this much invisible stuff, the maths all works, so that's good enough to be going on with for now. When we know more, we'll update the model."
The important thing is that we always need to avoid falling into the trap of thinking the model is a perfect representation of reality. The map is not the territory.
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Dark Matter isn't the solid explanation that there is invisible stuff doing things. But it is a statement, that there needs to be extra mass in the universe to explain the phenomenon. We currently cannot detect it, but lets see if there is way to find and measure it. The one thing that differentiate the Dark Matter hypothesis from a religious stance. Is Dark Matter is expected to have a gravitational effect which can be measured if found.
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Dark Matter is the invisible force pulling everything Together
and
Dark Energy is the invisible force that is pushing everything Apart ?
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Shut up Wesley !
What about the planets around PSR1257+12? (Score:2)
The planets of the pulsar PSR B1257+12 were discovered before the planets of 51 Peg (1992 and 1994 vs. 1995). So technically they are the first extrasolar planets to be discovered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
No idea why the discovery of Aleksander Wolszczan wasn't awarded.
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"No idea why the discovery of Aleksander Wolszczan wasn't awarded."
Who discovered him?
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His mother. Unfortunately the committee is sexist.
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Probably his parents.
Anyway, looks like the award was for the discovery of the first planet orbiting a solar-like star, so the pulsar system doesn't count.
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Because a pulsar is not like the sun by a wide margin: 20 km vs 1'400''000 km for their respective diameters. Also most of the pulsar light is in the form of x-rays, while the sun emits at wavelengths suited for our eyes.
In other words what makes the interest for exoplanets high, the possibility of exolife, is absent for bodies orbiting pulsars. It is sane to not mix the widely different environments.
What does that have to do with Makeup? (Score:2)
I was hoping for a discovery that will better cover wrinkles and make us look younger.
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