We celebrate Christmas this year with additional cosmic excitement as the “ring of fire” solar eclipse was visible across South-East Asia this Boxing Day, captured also in these 2 beautiful shots (above and below) from friends in Singapore.
We also celebrate this year’s Nobel physics prize being awarded to exoplanets that are planets that orbit around stars that are outside our solar system (here’s NASA on exoplanets). The discovery was made by 2 physicists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz in 1995 of the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star, showing conclusively that the sun isn't the only star to host a family of planets, something we had long figured but never demonstrated. It is of interest to note that the discovery of the first exoplanet itself was in 1992 but those exoplanets were orbiting a pulsar, the rapidly rotating, dense leftover core from a once-giant star.
We wish you all a Happy Holiday season.