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Nobel Prize for the accelerating universe

04 अक्टू 2011 2s टिप्पणियाँ

by प्रवीण in विज्ञान Tags: "Nobel prize in Physics", 2011, Nobel prize, Physics

Fig.1: Accelerating expansion of the Universe, (courtesy: http://www.universeadventure.org ).

Astrophysicists Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess are awarded 2011 year’s Nobel Prize in physics “for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae.”

“In a universe which is dominated by matter, one would expect gravity eventually should make the expansion slow down. Imagine then the utter astonishment when two groups of scientists headed by this year’s Nobel Laureates in 1998 discovered that the expansion was not slowing down, but was actually accelerating,” as the Nobel committee’s Olga Botner commented today.

For almost a century, the Space has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, if the expansion will continue to speed up, the Universe will end in ice. The acceleration is believed to be driven by dark energy, one of the great mysteries in the Cosmology today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about 75% of the Universe. Therefore the discovery helped to unveil mysteries of Cosmos, but also raises many new questions.

Astronomer Brian Schmidt was just sitting down to have dinner with his family in Canberra when the phone call came from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: “It feels like when my children were born”, he said directly after he received the massage about the prize. The member of the Nobel Committee, Lars Brink told that practical developments from the findings were not obvious: “This is curiosity driven research,” he said. Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, praised the work of the prizewinners but criticized the rules that up to three people can share the Nobel Prize: “It would have been fairer, and would send a less distorted message about how this kind of science is actually done, if the award had been made collectively to all members of the two groups,” he said.

Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University, Canberra and Adam Riess of the Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore share half of the 10 million SEK prize money. Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley won the other half of the prize.