from Hacker News

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019

by _of on 10/8/19, 10:04 AM with 104 comments

• by scotty79 on 10/8/19, 11:23 AM

  > "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star."

  "Solar-type star" is meaningful here because first extrasolar planets we discovered orbit the pulsar.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12

• by shafyy on 10/8/19, 10:46 AM

  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.

  The first two are Saint Lucia and Luxemburg, which have 180k and 600k inhabitants respectively.

  Among the bigger countries, Switzerland has the most per capita Nobel prizes.

  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.

  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...

• by melling on 10/8/19, 11:12 AM

  Quanta has started their coverage.

  https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-in-physics-to-jam...

  Here’s yesterday’s article for the Nobel in Medicine:

  https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-awarded-for-cells...

• by cowbird on 10/8/19, 2:39 PM

  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.

• by adrianhon on 10/8/19, 3:46 PM

  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.

  Source: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/famous-trinity-alumni/nobe...

• by whatshisface on 10/8/19, 2:41 PM

  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? ;)

• by safgasCVS on 10/8/19, 12:05 PM

  Still cant believe the economics profession managed to convince people it deserves a seat at the table of the hard sciences

• by rurban on 10/9/19, 7:24 AM

  Comics, no photos? These are real people. Come on, did they read too many Google PR campaigns? Or watched too many Marvel movies?

• by valevk on 10/9/19, 6:01 AM

  "The curve shows how many spots there are of each size in the background radiation."

  "The first peak shows that the universe is geometrically flat, i.e. two parallel lines will never meet."

  Can somebody explain this, please?

• by bawana on 10/8/19, 2:55 PM

  Is the nobel prize taxable? If you live in St. Lucia do you pay ANY tax on it?

• by perseusprime11 on 10/8/19, 5:13 PM

  Does discovering an exoplanet really qualify for Nobel Prize?