Colloquium Detail

2011 Nobel Prize in Physics: Supernova, Cosmic Acceleration and the Fate of the Universe

Date: 10/31/2011

Roger Blandford
SLAC

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Adam Reiss and Brian Schmidt for their discovery that the universe is accelerating. This realization, which was made by studying exploding stars called supernovae, may have vindicated a 93 year old proposal by Albert Einstein that space is permeated by a universal and eternal cosmological constant promising a bleak future of dilution and decay. The research which led to this surprising and challenging discovery will be described in simple terms and some of the ways that astronomers and physicists have been building upon it will be explained.