James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz have been announced as the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.
The awarding of the prize has been split between Peebles who worked on the evolution of the Universe, and the Swiss pair of scientists who discovered a Sun-like star.
The discoveries by the trio of scientists have forever changed our conceptions of our world and beyond.
Half of the 9 million Swedish krona ($910,000) prize will be given to Peebles, while Mayor and Queloz will split the rest.
James Peebles works as the Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University. He spent two decades developing his theory about the universe, with it becoming the foundation of our modern understanding of the universe’s history. His framework stretches from the Big Bang to the present day.
In a model published by Nobel, it shows that 95% of of the content in our universe is just some kind of dark matter.
Mayor and Queloz focused on searching for unknown worlds in the Milky Way. In 1995, the University of Geneva tutors discovered the first planet outside of our solar system.
The planet 51 Pegasi b is a gas giant orbiting a star 50 light-years away. After its discovery, the duo were credited with having “started a revolution in astronomy” by finding the planet.
At the press conference in Sweden, the committee said that more than 4,000 exoplanets have been found in the Milky Way since then.
Ulf Danielsson, a member of the Nobel Committee, congratulated the winners at the conference:
Both these prizes… tell us something essential, something existential about our place in the Universe.
Speaking to CNN, Professor Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge said Peebles was “the most influential and respected leader of empirical cosmology with a sustained record of achievement spanning half a century”.
Rees also praised and Mayor and Queloz as being “among the leaders in the ongoing research that has led to the discovery of many thousands of other planetary systems, exhibiting an unexpected variety”.
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Matt Weston is a lover of electric cars, artificial intelligence and space. From Cornwall, he’s a UCLan graduate that still dreams of being a Formula One driver in the very near future. Previously work includes reporting for regional newspapers and freelance video for the International Business Times.