Three scientists win Nobel Prize in physics

The 113th Nobel Prize in physics honored cosmologist James Peebles of Princeton University on Tuesday for his theories about dark matter and cosmic background radiation. He shares the prize with Swiss scientists Michel Mayor, 77, and Didier Queloz, 53, who discovered the first planet outside our solar system, 51 Pegasi B, in 1995.

Who else won this year? Americans William G. Kaelin Jr. and Gregg L. Semenza, along with Briton Peter J. Ratcliffe, took home a Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for identifying how low oxygen affects the body’s cells. The Nobel Committees will award the chemistry prize on Wednesday and two literature prizes on Thursday. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday.

Dig deeper: The Swedish Academy is giving out two literature prizes because last year’s was canceled—read why in Onize Ohikere’s report in The Sift.