Written By José Eduardo Rodrigues Batista 

    During October's first week, the Nobel Prize winners were announced in all categories. On the 8th day, the world met the laureate physicists with the prize. James Peebles, Didier Queloz and Michael Mayor.

 James Peebles for his theoretical discoveries in cosmology.
 He is an American-Canadian researcher at the University of Princeton. His studies involve the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Using theoretical models and from studies of small temperature variations of the CMB radiation, was able to predict how the universe is constituted and made of. In these small variations in temperature, there are three spikes, the first one indicates a plane geometry for the universe. The second spike allows for an estimate that all ordinary matter represents only 5% of the universe's matter and energy. And the third spike indicates that 26% is constituted of Dark Matter.
 Dark Matter and Energy represents a new type of backbone of our universe.

 Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz for their discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.
 Both are professors and researchers at the University of Genebra and found out the 51 Pegasi B exoplanet in 1995. The exoplanet gets its name from orbiting the 51 Pegasi star, located 50 light-years away from Earth, it’s also a gas giant just like Jupiter. Until then it was believed that gas giants would form far away from their orbiting stars, but 51 Pegasi B is located only 8 million kilometers away from its host star. For comparison, Mercury is approximately 58 million kilometers away from the Sun.
 So close to your host star, in order not to be gravitationally attracted by the same, the exoplanet makes its orbit approximately 4 days. The short orbital period of 51 Pegasi B drastically changed the way in which large exoplanets were looking for orbiting a solar-type star.

(Originally posted in 2nd ed., November 2019)