Written in the stars
"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote Robert Frost. What will be the ultimate fate of the universe? Probably it will end in ice, if one believes the winners of This year's Nobel Prize in Physics. They studied dozens of exploding stars called supernovae, and discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever faster. The discovery was a complete surprise, even for winners themselves.
In 1998, cosmology was shaken to its foundations that two research teams presented their results. Directed by Saul Perlmutter, a team had started work in 1988. Brian Schmidt led to another computer, released in late 1994, when Adam Riess was to play a crucial role.
The research teams rushed to map the universe by finding the most distant supernovae. Sophisticated telescopes on the ground and in space, and more powerful computers and new digital image sensors (CCD, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009) opened the possibility in the early 1990's to add more rooms the cosmological puzzle.
The team used a special type of supernova called type Ia supernova. It is compact, old star explosion, which is heavier than the Sun, but as small as Earth. The only a supernova could emit light as the entire galaxy. All in all, two research groups found more than 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected - this was a sign that the accelerating expansion of the universe. The pitfalls are numerous, and scientists have found, in the certainty that both groups had reached the same surprising conclusion.
Almost a century has been known to the Universe expands as a result of Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, it was found that this expansion is accelerating, is staggering. If the expansion continues to accelerate the universe will end in ice.
The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what dark energy is still a mystery - perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three-quarters of the universe. Therefore, the results of the 2011 Nobel laureates in physics have helped to reveal a universe that is largely unknown to science. And everything is possible again.
Saul Perlmutter, a U.S. citizen. Born in 1959 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA. Ph.D. 1986, University of California, Berkeley, USA. Head of the Supernova Cosmology Project, Professor of Astrophysics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Brian P. Schmidt, USA and an Australian citizen. Born in 1967 in Missoula, MT, USA. 1993 Ph.D. from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Search Head high-z supernovae, Professor Emeritus, National University of Australia, Weston Creek, Australia.
Adam G. Riess, a U.S. citizen. Born in 1969 in Washington, DC, USA. 1996 Ph.D. from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University and the Institute of Space Telescope Science, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Prize amount: SEK 10 million, half of which Saul Perlmutter and the other half equally between Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt.
