- Born:
- 1942, Lausanne, Switzerland (age 84)
- Awards And Honors:
- Nobel Prize (2019)
- Subjects Of Study:
- 51 Pegasi
- 51 Pegasi b
- binary star
- extrasolar planet
- planet
- radial velocity
Michel Mayor
-
Who is Michel Mayor?
Michel Mayor, born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1942, is a Swiss astronomer renowned for his contribution to the discovery of the first known extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star 51 Pegasi b. This groundbreaking work, done in collaboration with Didier Queloz, earned him a share of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Mayor's career was primarily at the University of Geneva, where he became a professor in 1988 and the director of the Geneva Observatory in 1998. Using the ELODIE spectrograph, Mayor and Queloz detected 51 Pegasi b in 1995, opening up a new field in astronomy focused on the study of extrasolar planets. Over two decades, thousands of extrasolar planets have been discovered. Mayor also led the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) project, which found numerous extrasolar planet candidates.
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What field of science does Michel Mayor work in?
Michel Mayor is a Swiss astronomer who works in the field of astronomy. He is renowned for his work in discovering the first known extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b, with Didier Queloz. This discovery opened up a new field in astronomy, the study of extrasolar planets. Mayor's research also focused on binary stars, open and globular clusters, and the structure and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 for his contributions to the field.
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What important discovery is Michel Mayor famous for?
Michel Mayor is a Swiss astronomer famous for his discovery, along with Didier Queloz, of 51 Pegasi b, the first known extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star. This planet has a mass about half that of Jupiter and an orbit period of 4.23 days.
The existence of 51 Pegasi b, a planet unlike any in the solar system, surprised astronomers and opened a new field of astronomy: the study of extrasolar planets. For this work, Mayor and Queloz shared half of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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What is an exoplanet, according to Michel Mayor’s research?
According to Michel Mayor, an exoplanet is a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. In 1995, Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, using the radial velocity method, which detects the motion of host stars caused by the gravitational pull of planets. This discovery opened a new field of astronomy dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets.
The radial velocity method, used by Mayor and Queloz, measures the sizes and shapes of exoplanet orbits and the lower limits of their masses. Since Mayor's initial discovery, thousands of exoplanets have been identified, many of which are unlike those in our solar system, such as hot Jupiters and super-Earths.
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How did Michel Mayor and his team discover the first exoplanet around a sun-like star?
In 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced their discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet found orbiting a sun-like star. They detected the planet by observing the wobble in the star's motion caused by the planet's gravity. This was achieved using a new spectrograph called ELODIE, which measured the star's radial velocity with great accuracy. The radial velocity method, which identifies the sizes and shapes of exoplanet orbits, has proven to be the most successful technique for finding and studying exoplanets.
The planet, named 51 Pegasi b, is about half the mass of Jupiter and has an orbit of only 4.23 days. This discovery revolutionized the field of astronomy and opened up the study of extrasolar planets. For their discovery, Mayor and Queloz won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Why was Michel Mayor awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics?
Michel Mayor, a Swiss astronomer, was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery, along with Didier Queloz, of the first known extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star. This planet, 51 Pegasi b, has a mass about half that of Jupiter and an orbit of only 4.23 days, which surprised astronomers. The discovery of 51 Pegasi b opened up a new field of astronomy dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets, and over the following two decades, thousands more extrasolar planets were discovered. Mayor's work also included the development of advanced spectrographs such as ELODIE, CORALIE, and HARPS, which have been instrumental in detecting extrasolar planet candidates.
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Michel Mayor (born 1942, Lausanne, Switzerland) is a Swiss astronomer who was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery with Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz of the first known extrasolar planet orbiting a Sun-like star. Mayor and Queloz received one half of the prize; the other half was awarded to Canadian-born American physicist James Peebles.
Mayor received a master’s degree in physics from the University of Lausanne in 1966 and a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Geneva in 1971. He spent the rest of his career at the University of Geneva, becoming a professor in 1988 and director of the Geneva Observatory in 1998. He became a professor emeritus in 2007.
Mayor’s early research focused on binary stars, open and globular clusters, and the structure and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy. In 1994 he and graduate student Didier Queloz began observing 142 stars at the Haute-Provence Observatory in France. They were using a new spectrograph called ELODIE that would provide accurate measurements of a star’s radial velocity (that is, its velocity toward or away from the observer). When a planet orbits a star, the planet and the star orbit around their common centre of mass, and the star’s motion around the centre of mass can be seen as a shift in the star’s spectral lines. ELODIE could detect changes in a star’s radial velocity of 13 metres per second, which is about the same amount of radial velocity change that the Sun is moved by its largest planet, Jupiter. Because Jupiter takes nearly 12 Earth years to orbit the Sun, Mayor and Queloz were not expecting quick results.
Observations of the star 51 Pegasi began that September. In January 1995 Mayor and Queloz detected a planet, 51 Pegasi b, with a mass about half that of Jupiter and a period of 4.23 days, which they confirmed and announced later that year. The existence of 51 Pegasi b, a planet unlike any in the solar system, surprised astronomers, and its discovery opened up a new field of astronomy, the study of extrasolar planets. Over more than two decades after Mayor and Queloz discovered 51 Pegasi b, thousands of extrasolar planets became known.
Mayor and Queloz collaborated on further searches for extrasolar planets. Beginning in 1998, they used the CORALIE spectrograph at La Silla Observatory in Chile to search for planets around 1,647 nearby stars. The CORALIE project has found more than 100 extrasolar planet candidates. Mayor was the principal investigator of the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) project, which used a spectrometer at La Silla to observe radial velocity changes of 30 cm per second. HARPS began observations in 2003 and has found more than 100 extrasolar planet candidates, including several “super-Earths,” rocky planets that are more massive than Earth.