Topics Covered:
- Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.
Nobel Prize in Physics
Context: Three scientists- Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz- have jointly been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics for encouraging the growth of the “understanding of our place in the Universe”.
Details:
- Peebles findings:
He won one-half of the prize” for theoretical discoveries that have contributed to our understanding of “how the Universe evolved after the Big Bang“.
Using theoretical tools and calculations, he drew a link between the temperature of the radiation emitted after the Big Bang and the amount of matter it created.
His work showed that the matter known to us — such as stars, planets, and ourselves — only makes up five percent, while the other 95 percent is made up of “unknown dark matter and dark energy”.
- Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz:
They shared the prize for their discovery of an exoplanet outside our solar system orbiting a solar-type star in the Milky Way.
They were able to detect a gaseous ball similar in size to Jupiter, orbiting a star 50 light years from our own Sun.
Harnessing the Doppler effect, the pair proved the planet, known as 51 Pegasus b, was orbiting its star.
Sources: the Hindu.
