Discovery of Accelerating Universe Wins 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - 07:30 in Astronomy & Space

The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded today to Saul Perlmutter at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Brian Schmidt at the Australian National Lab and Adam Reiss at Johns Hopkins University for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.“In a universe which is dominated by matter, one would expect gravity eventually should make the expansion slow down, the Royal Swedish Academy’s Olga Botner said this morning at the announcement event in Stockholm. "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, it was actually accelerating." [More]

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