The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three American-born scientists for discovering that the expansion of the universe is surprisingly accelerating, and not slowing down, through the study of exploding stars known as supernovae.
One half of the prize will be given to Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University in Weston Creek, Australia and to Adam G. Riess of the Johns Hopkins University Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae."
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| Saul Perlmutter |
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Adam G. Riess |
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Brian P. Schmidt |
"Imagine the amazement that the expansion [of the universe] was not slowing down but it was actually accelerating," said Uppsala University professor Olga Botner during the Nobel Prize announcement in Stockholm Tuesday morning. "The unreal feeling could be likened to the feeling you get if you in your car step on the brake and suddenly you realize that your car is actually accelerating."
from: www.insidescience.org
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