Journey into the past of the universe: what is the merit of the Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry - ForumDaily
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Journey into the past of the universe: what is the merit of the Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics - "for contributions to the understanding of the evolution of the Universe and the place of the Earth in the cosmos" - was divided into two parts, one part went to the American James Peebles, and the second to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2019 awarded to John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries. Writes about this with the BBC.

Фото: Depositphotos

One half of the physics prize went to the American James Peebles from Princeton University for theoretical discoveries in the field of physical cosmology. The second was shared by Michel Mayor from the University of Geneva and Didier Queloz from Cambridge for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.

“This year’s laureates have helped answer fundamental questions about our existence,” the Nobel Committee said in a statement. — What happened in the earliest stages of the existence of the Universe and what happened later? Are there other planets out there orbiting other stars?”

As stated at the announcement ceremony, the discoveries of these scientists “painted a picture of the Universe that turned out to be much more mysterious and amazing than we could have imagined.”

What is the essence of these fundamental discoveries?

In 1965, American physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered amazing thermal radiation emanating from an incomprehensible source and uniformly filling all of outer space.

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Thus, experimental confirmation of the Big Bang theory was obtained. The strange radiation turned out to be an echo of it - almost as ancient as the Universe itself, arising in the very early stages of its existence. That is why Russian-speaking scientists call this radiation cosmic microwave background; in English literature the term “cosmic microwave background” is more often used.

We know nothing about what happened before the Big Bang, which occurred about 14 billion years ago. However, we know what began immediately after: the Universe, which was a clot of hot plasma, began to rapidly expand - and at the same time cool down.

After about 400 thousand years, it expanded and cooled so much that it became “transparent” - photons stopped continuously colliding with other particles and began to move freely in space. These ancient quanta of light make up the cosmic microwave background.

But discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation is like finding an ancient text in an unknown dead language. To read it, you need to disassemble the mysterious writings and translate them - present them in an understandable form.

James Peebles was able to do this using the language of mathematics, thus laying the foundations of theoretical cosmology. He was able to predict a number of relict radiation effects, including its role in the formation of galaxies. Further calculations helped confirm the hypothesis of the existence of cold dark matter (which does not emit electromagnetic radiation) and dark energy, which explains the entire accelerating expansion of the universe.

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Later observations and satellite data confirmed the correctness of the American physicist’s assumptions. We now know that the matter we are familiar with—that is, everything that science has studied for millennia—makes up only 5% of the total energy contained in our Universe.

Dark matter accounts for another 26%, dark energy - 69%. We have yet to understand the nature of these mysterious hypothetical components.

Thousands of new worlds

In October, 1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Kelo opened a new page in the history of space, announcing the discovery of the first exoplanet (that is, a planet outside our solar system) in the orbit of a solar-type star.

Until then, scientists had no answer to the question of whether there were, in principle, any other planets orbiting the stars known to us. Unlike hot stars, their cool satellites do not emit light - so indirect evidence must be used to search for exoplanets.

Initially, the new planet was called Bellerophon, but later it received the official name Dimidium. This gas giant orbits the star Helvetios, located about 50 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus and a yellow dwarf, like our Sun.

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Dimidium belongs to the class of “hot Jupiters,” that is, its mass is comparable to the heaviest planet in our solar system, but it is located so close to its star that its orbit is an order of magnitude smaller than the orbit of Mercury.

This is precisely what helped him to be discovered. Such a massive satellite in such a close orbit (the planet makes a complete revolution around Helvetios in just 4,23 days) makes its star oscillate slightly relative to the Earth, since both distant objects rotate around a common center of mass. This hesitation was noticed by scientists and formed the basis for the discovery of Major and Kelo.

Over the past 24 years, more than 4000 exoplanets have been discovered. Among them there are those that are similar to Earth - it is possible that there are conditions in which life can exist.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to John Goodenough, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Stanley Whittingham works at Binghamton University in New York, and Akira Yoshino at Meiho University in Japan. They will divide the award equally among themselves, each receiving 9 million Swedish kronor ($905).

97-year-old Gudenough became the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize.

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Lithium-ion batteries have played an important role in the development of high technology. They are much lighter and more compact than earlier types of batteries, and are used in portable electronics: mobile phones, laptops, pacemakers and electric cars.

Last year, three scientists from the United States and Britain became Nobel laureates: California Institute of Technology researcher Frances Arnold, University of Missouri professor George Smith and emeritus fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge Sir Gregory Winter - for inventing a way to “guide evolution” and create new enzymes and antibodies.

These studies are already used in practice in the production of new drugs and environmental fuels.

Chemistry was close to Alfred Nobel - as we know, he was well versed in explosives - and he included chemistry in his will in second place after physics.

And oddly enough, it was chemists who, more often than other scientists and Nobel laureates, found themselves closely associated with politics.

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Hitler forbade two German chemists to receive the Nobel Prize at the end of the 1930's.

When the Nobel Meets Lenin

Only two people in the world had the title of Nobel laureate at the same time in two different fields, and both showed themselves in chemistry: Maria Sklodowska Curie and Linus Karl Pauling.

The famous Marie Curie, who was the first to study the phenomenon of radioactivity, received a Nobel in physics in 1903, and in chemistry in 1911.

American biochemist Linus Pauling received the most prestigious scientific prize in 1954 for his study of chemical bonds - the attraction between atoms, ions and molecules, due to which stable chemical molecules are formed.

And eight years later, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize already as a fighter for peace.

The scientist’s statements against nuclear weapons tests and against the war as a whole were poorly perceived by the American government: they tried to deprive him of the right to travel abroad and called him a communist agent.

In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, a participant in the movement against scientists of nuclear weapons, a signatory to the manifesto Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell and many other petitions Linus Karl Pauling was awarded the Lenin Prize for Peace (before the 1956 prize was called the Stalin Prize).

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