Dark Energy Won The Nobel Prize in Physics

Scholarships today with the Nobel Prize for Physics, which was almost a matter of time, not if. When the three winners and their teams in 1998 have been announced that the universe is expanding, not only, but the acceleration has shaken the basic cosmology: The results, said the world would be with a bang but end with a groan. Dark Energy won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Composite Image of the Tycho Supernova Remnant X-ray

Dark Energy Won The Nobel Prize in Physics 

And the question of why - the mysterious force of dark energy, which represents about three-quarters of the mass-energy of the universe - is one of the great questions of modern science.

Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess was common for his discovery that the universe is growing at a rapid pace. They used ground-based telescopes and space to represent the supernova of Type Ia further and found this star exploded seemed calmer than he was. Ias type are used as standard candles, because astronomers know that their brightness, which is very consistent, and you can use to measure their distance from us.

However, measurements have shown that these standard candles are not bright enough, but faded. Something happened, and could easily the technology, or perhaps due to the calculations. But the two teams - is the same - the Supernova Cosmology Project and the Research Team of High-z Supernova. The data showed that the standard candles away at a rapid pace.

It was a surprising discovery. Everyone knew, since Edwin Hubble that the universe was thrown out after the Big Bang 13700000000 few years. But for the acceleration? It meant something else was at work, a force far more mysterious and strange than we had thought. Nobody knows what this power is, but after ten years of calculations, the physicists know that about 74 percent of the universe. "We call it dark energy to express ignorance," Perlmutter said in a conference I attended in 2008.

The work is interesting in itself, but physicists are also match some of the young scientists evangelists. Perlmutter, 52, is a lively and enthusiastic speaker, the exact kind of person you want to explain terms such as "baryonic oscillation", and significant melting. He continued his research on dark energy as a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He wants a supernova observatory, "Everyone was talking about the constructed dark energy, but no nothing about it" Supernova Acceleration Probe (SNAP), as a project of the Works Progress Administration, told Time.

Riess, who is only 41, is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and a professor at Johns Hopkins. It is also the recipient of a grant from the MacArthur Foundation genius and numerous awards for his work in cosmology.

Schmidt, who is 44 and works at the Australian National University, took some of the calculations that the results of Riess checked.

I have Perlmutter card on my desk, and you speak is one of the reasons why I wanted to travel and things like the cosmological constant to write. These are important things - the eternal nature and future of all things, and yet enigmatic and mysterious, but almost, because by Perlmutter, Riess and Schmidt, recognizable truth.

"The results of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics have contributed to create a universe that science reveals largely unknown," wrote the Nobel Assembly. "And everything is possible again."