admin Tuesday “The Big Bang Theory” — the American TV sitcom, not the scientific explanation for how the universe began — entered the annals of Nobel Prize history.
The announcement of the winners of this year’s Nobel in physics began with a nod to an unlikely cultural reference: the opening lyrics to the show’s theme song. “The Big Bang Theory” had its finale in May. In the episode, two of the main characters, Sheldon and Amy, win the physics prize.
“Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state, then nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started,” academy member Ulf Danielsson said, quoting “The Big Bang” theme at the presentation in Stockholm.
A Canadian-American scientist and two Swiss scientists won the physics prize for their work in understanding how the universe has evolved from the Big Bang and the blockbuster discovery of a planet outside our solar system.
Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the TV show was a “fantastic achievement” that brought the “world of science to laptops and living rooms around the world.” Referencing its theme song therefore seemed fitting, he said.
“The Big Bang Theory” debuted in 2007 and overcame early doubts to become a cult classic. The show featured a crew of nerdy misfits, all scientists on the West coast of the United States.
James Peebles, from Canada, has been awarded half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£740,000) prize for his theoretical discoveries about the evolution of the universe. The Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz share the other half of the prize for their discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system.
Peebles was rewarded for laying a foundation for modern cosmology, including his realisation that faint microwave radiation that filled the cosmos 400,000 years after the Big Bang contains crucial clues to what the universe looked like at this primitive stage and how it has evolved over the subsequent 13bn years.
Mayor and Queloz have been recognised for their joint discovery in 1995 of the first exoplanet, 50 light years away in the constellation of Pegasus. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, is a gaseous ball about 150 times more massive than Earth and has a scorching surface temperature of about 1,000C.
Queloz, who holds posts at the University of Geneva and the University of Cambridge, told a press briefing at London that he had been expecting a call about a grant he was working on when the news came through.
The pair discovered the exoplanet using a sophisticated technique known as Doppler spectroscopy, which measures the tiny wobble of a star that occurs as the star-planet pair move around a common centre of gravity. This wobbling movement alternately blueshifts and redshifts the light from the star.
When Queloz and Mayor set up the search it was with low expectations of finding anything because any planets massive enough to create a measurable Doppler shift were expected to have such long orbits that the wobble would take years to detect. Surprisingly, though, they found a huge planet sitting extremely close to its host star, with an orbit of just four days. “Because it was so near in to its star, no one really believed it,” said Queloz, adding that it took several years to convince the world that the finding was real.
The announcement of the winners of this year’s Nobel in physics began with a nod to an unlikely cultural reference: the opening lyrics to the show’s theme song. “The Big Bang Theory” had its finale in May. In the episode, two of the main characters, Sheldon and Amy, win the physics prize.
“Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state, then nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started,” academy member Ulf Danielsson said, quoting “The Big Bang” theme at the presentation in Stockholm.
A Canadian-American scientist and two Swiss scientists won the physics prize for their work in understanding how the universe has evolved from the Big Bang and the blockbuster discovery of a planet outside our solar system.
Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the TV show was a “fantastic achievement” that brought the “world of science to laptops and living rooms around the world.” Referencing its theme song therefore seemed fitting, he said.
“The Big Bang Theory” debuted in 2007 and overcame early doubts to become a cult classic. The show featured a crew of nerdy misfits, all scientists on the West coast of the United States.
James Peebles, from Canada, has been awarded half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£740,000) prize for his theoretical discoveries about the evolution of the universe. The Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz share the other half of the prize for their discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system.
Peebles was rewarded for laying a foundation for modern cosmology, including his realisation that faint microwave radiation that filled the cosmos 400,000 years after the Big Bang contains crucial clues to what the universe looked like at this primitive stage and how it has evolved over the subsequent 13bn years.
Mayor and Queloz have been recognised for their joint discovery in 1995 of the first exoplanet, 50 light years away in the constellation of Pegasus. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, is a gaseous ball about 150 times more massive than Earth and has a scorching surface temperature of about 1,000C.
Queloz, who holds posts at the University of Geneva and the University of Cambridge, told a press briefing at London that he had been expecting a call about a grant he was working on when the news came through.
The pair discovered the exoplanet using a sophisticated technique known as Doppler spectroscopy, which measures the tiny wobble of a star that occurs as the star-planet pair move around a common centre of gravity. This wobbling movement alternately blueshifts and redshifts the light from the star.
When Queloz and Mayor set up the search it was with low expectations of finding anything because any planets massive enough to create a measurable Doppler shift were expected to have such long orbits that the wobble would take years to detect. Surprisingly, though, they found a huge planet sitting extremely close to its host star, with an orbit of just four days. “Because it was so near in to its star, no one really believed it,” said Queloz, adding that it took several years to convince the world that the finding was real.
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