Public Lecture

The 2019 Nobel Prize for physics: insights on exoplanets

Dr Rosemary Mardling

The 2019 Physics Nobel Prize was awarded "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos". Half went to Princeton's James Peebles "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology'", and half to Geneva's Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star". This talk will provide some insights into the exoplanet story. I will discuss why it took until 1995 to detect the first exoplanet around a main sequence star, the impact the field has had on science in general including billions for past, current and future space missions, some of the completely unexpected surprises revealed so far, and finally a little about my own contribution to our understanding of how Nature forms delicate resonant structures from whatever is available.