The physics prize was split two ways, but both halves went for discoveries beyond Earth
will states that the annual prizes bearing his name should be given to those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”. The science awards, though, have a tendency to end up in the hands of those who have made esoteric, if profound, advances rather than practical ones. Not so with this year’s prize in chemistry. Three researchers—two from America and one from Japan—have been rewarded for their work in developing the lithium-ion battery.
Dr Whittingham discovered that when lithium ions intercalate with a substance called titanium disulphide, the interaction stores a useful amount of energy. Employing metallic lithium as an anode and titanium disulphide as a cathode, he built a rechargeable battery cell that worked at room temperature. In it, lithium at the anode is ionised and the ions thus produced then move through an intervening electrolyte and into the spaces in the titanium disulphide cathode.
Instead of lithium, he tried various carbon-based materials that might hold lithium ions. He found success with petroleum coke, a by-product of the fossil-fuel industry. This, he discovered, could hold such ions in abundance. His design was not only safer than using a pure lithium anode , but longer lasting, too. In Dr Yoshino’s version of the battery, both anode and cathode have a long life because they are not damaged by chemical reactions as the battery is used or recharged.
That discovery of 51 Pegasi b, as this planet is now known, launched the field of exoplanet astronomy. To date, astronomers have found almost 4,000 other such planets—and the wide variety of sizes, orbits and compositions of these objects continues to surprise researchers, who have yet to come up with a comprehensive physical theory of how planetary systems form.
Until the first decades of the 20th century, astronomers had assumed the universe to be stationary and eternal. This was shown to be incorrect in the 1920s, with the discovery that all galaxies are moving away from each other. In other words, the universe is expanding. Rewind the clock and this means that, at the start of time, now called the Big Bang, the universe would have been incredibly small, hot and dense.
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