This year's Nobel prize for physics was split two ways, but both halves went for discoveries beyond Earth
THIS YEAR’S Nobel prize for physics was split two ways, but both halves went for discoveries beyond Earth. One was for a finding that is, by astronomical standards, quite close by—a planet going around a star a mere 50 light-years distant. The other was for an overview of the entire universe.
Since planets do not shine by themselves, astronomers needed to develop special methods to find them. The one Dr Mayor and Dr Queloz used relies on a phenomenon called the Doppler effect. As a planet orbits its star, that star will also move slightly, as it is pulled around by the gravity of the planet. This will cause the frequency of the starlight arriving at Earth to oscillate , in the same way that the frequency of an ambulance siren shifts as the vehicle passes by.
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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