> "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star."<p>"Solar-type star" is meaningful here because first extrasolar planets we discovered orbit the pulsar.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12</a>
Two of the laureates are Swiss. This brings the total number of Swiss laureates to 28, making it the third country with most Nobel prizes per capita.<p>The first two are Saint Lucia and Luxemburg, which have 180k and 600k inhabitants respectively.<p>Among the bigger countries, Switzerland has the most per capita Nobel prizes.<p>Interestingly, UK is on number 9 on that list and has a significantly bigger population than the top 8 (I'd say 10x more people than the average top 8 country). Super impressive. Of course, Germany (14) and the US (16) are also not half bad, especially since the US has 5x the population of UK.<p>Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...</a>
Quanta has started their coverage.<p><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-in-physics-to-james-peebles-michel-mayor-and-didier-queloz-20191008/" rel="nofollow">https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-in-physics-to-jam...</a><p>Here’s yesterday’s article for the Nobel in Medicine:<p><a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-awarded-for-cells-adaptations-to-oxygen-20191007/" rel="nofollow">https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-awarded-for-cells...</a>
Peebles has been a giant in cosmology over the past 50 years, when cosmology has gone from really speculation to precision measurements. There's a decent argument that he should have been included in the 1978 prize with Penzias and Wilson. He's getting old and this might be the last time the committee could sweetie him in.
If Trinity College, Cambridge were an independent country, its 34 Nobel Prize winners would put it fifth in the world rankings, ahead of Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, and behind only the US, UK, Germany, and France.<p>Source: <a href="https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/famous-trinity-alumni/nobel-laureates/" rel="nofollow">https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/famous-trinity-alumni/nobe...</a>
I am not such a fan of this one, they essentially gave two separate half-prizes this year. James Peebles’ contribution to science was not related to exoplanets, nor was the exoplanet discovery related to cosmology. Instead, they could have waited a year, and given them sequentially. Has this ever happened before in Nobel history? Will this lead to an era where one hundred $10,000 Nobels are handed out each year? ;)
"The curve shows how many spots there are of each size in the background radiation."<p>"The first peak shows that the universe is geometrically flat, i.e. two parallel lines will never meet."<p>Can somebody explain this, please?