- Title: 'It was quite a joy ride': Physics Nobel Prize winner looks back
- Date: 8th October 2019
- Summary: PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 8, 2019) (REUTERS) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY COSMOLOGIST AND NOBLE PRIZE WINNER FOR PHYSICS, JAMES PEEBLES, ENTERING AUDITORIUM FOR CEREMONY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT, CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER, INTRODUCING PEEBLES AUDIENCE APPLAUDING (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY COSMOLOGIST AND NOBLE PRIZE WINNER FOR PHYSICS, JAMES PEEBLES, SAYING: "Much of it will go to charity. Some of it will go to charity. [LAUGHTER] Some will go to our children. I must say I owe a lot to the University of Manitoba and a chunk will go to it. And as Duncan [Haldane] and I, another Nobel laureate, were saying you have to be careful when you give away money, you don't want to pay taxes on it. So you must you must bequeath it before receive it. As for the rest of them, who who gives thought to such things. Not at this moment." APPLAUSE / PEEBLES SAYING, "NOW I KNOW HOW ROCK STARS FEEL" (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY COSMOLOGIST AND NOBLE PRIZE WINNER FOR PHYSICS, JAMES PEEBLES, SAYING: "I find it amazing always to consider that nature operates by rules that we cannot discover. I'm particularly intensely amazed to consider that when I worked in this field we had a theory of gravity, general relativity, which passed one demanding test on the scale of the solar system. In cosmology, we were invited to apply that same theory extrapolated to scales that are about 10 to the 15 times larger. Spectacular. Why in the world should you assume that the same physics would apply on those scales as in the solar system? I was nervous about that. I was nervous about that, I was nervous about the lack of evidence to about the nature of the universe. But the evidence kept appearing. It was quite a joy ride." GENERAL OF PEEBLES AND PANEL (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY COSMOLOGIST AND NOBLE PRIZE WINNER FOR PHYSICS, JAMES PEEBLES, SAYING: "So yes there is a mysterious form of matter, we call it dark matter for better, well it's just a word. We have a few constraints on its properties. We're dying to know what it might be. There are experiments in progress that are working very hard to find it, to detect it. It's really a tough game because since we don't know what it is, we don't know where to look. And so these experiments each must choose a direction, plow hard, work the devil out of it. And you don't know if you're looking in the right place. It will show up. They always do. [LAUGHTER] I warn you that the first announcement of detection will be greeted with great joy. 'This is the black, this is the microwave, this is the dark matter.' But we won't know whether that's really the dominant dark matter or just a trace element. My bet is that the dark matter is complicated and that the discovery will be a process of winnowing out different candidates, some of which are all there but in varying amounts. It'll be very exciting." (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY COSMOLOGIST AND NOBLE PRIZE WINNER FOR PHYSICS, JAMES PEEBLES, SAYING: "[PANELIST ASKING: "Can you talk a minute about how your teaching in the classroom experience has impacted your research and vice versa?"] "My teaching certainly has impacted my career. There is nothing, well you know, remember the story, there's nothing to concentrate the mind like the prospect of being hanged. And right just below that is the prospect of being asked in class a question you can't answer because it's something you never bothered to think through. I have immensely profited from the fact that when I have to stand up before these students, brilliant people, I better know what I'm talking about and that deeply increased my education of physics. The more I taught, the more I learn. I hope the students learned too, but I certainly did." PANEL (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT, CHRISTOPHER EISGRUBER, SAYING: "During my own time as a physics major, Professor Peebles was a popular teacher and a fixture in the undergraduate program. I am among the many students who benefited from his superb instruction as well as his famous ice cream breaks. Halfway through class, Jim would take a break and we would all go to buy ice cream from the vending machines in Jadwin Hall's basement. If I remember correctly, Jim would sometimes continue the lecture with ice cream in one hand and chalk in the other. Though I am not aware of any empirical proof connecting ice cream to cosmological insight, I will stand by the hypothesis enthusiastically championed by scores of undergraduates that those breaks facilitated our learning." CLOSE OF CEREMONY
- Embargoed: 22nd October 2019 21:01
- Keywords: Peebles Princeton Nobel Prize physics cosmology Christopher Eisgruber
- Location: PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, UNITED STATES
- City: PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Science
- Reuters ID: LVA001B08NLFR
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles celebrated his Nobel Prize win Tuesday (October 8) on his home turf of Princeton University with a ceremony in which he said his half-century plus career has been a "joy ride."
Peebles - who will share the prize with Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz - had after all been working on the evolution of the universe and discovering distant planets since 1964.
Using theoretical tools and calculations, Peebles was able to interpret trace radiation from the infancy of the universe and discover new physical processes, the Nobel academy said.
He showed that matter readily seen around us, be it pebbles, mountains or stars, actually make up only 5%, with the rest made up of dark energy and dark matter.
"I find it amazing always to consider that nature operates by rules that we cannot discover. I'm particularly intensely amazed to consider that when I worked in this field we had a theory of gravity, general relativity, which passed one demanding test on the scale of the solar system. In cosmology, we were invited to apply that same theory extrapolated to scales that are about 10 to the 15 times larger. Spectacular," he said. "I was nervous about the lack of evidence to about the nature of the universe. But the evidence kept appearing. It was quite a joy ride."
Peebles, of Princeton University in the United States, was awarded half of the 9-million-Swedish-crown ($910,000) prize while Mayor and Queloz, from Switzerland's University of Geneva and Britain's Cambridge University, shared the rest.
"Much of it will go to charity. Some of it will go to charity," he said to laughs. "Some will go to our children. I must say I owe a lot to the University of Manitoba and a chunk will go to it."
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the scientists' research had "transformed our ideas about the cosmos".
Mayor and his one-time doctoral student Queloz said it was "simply extraordinary" to be awarded a Nobel for what they described as "the most exciting discovery of our entire career".
The pair announced the first discovery of a planet outside our own solar system, a so-called "exoplanet", in 1995.
As for the next frontier, Peebles shared his views on the nature of dark matter.
"My bet is that the dark matter is complicated and that the discovery will be a process of winnowing out different candidates, some of which are all there but in varying amounts. It'll be very exciting," he said.
Peebles also thanked the Nobel committee for the award, although he said his advice to young people wishing to go into science would be not to be lured by the prospect of such prizes.
Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week; William Kaelin, Gregg Semenza and Peter Ratcliffe shared the medicine prize on Monday for discoveries about how cells respond to oxygen levels.
The Nobel prizes were created in a bequest by Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901. This year's physics prize will be followed by the awards for chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
(Production by: Andrew Hofstetter and Dan Fastenberg) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None