Scientists who discovered dark energy winners of this year's Physics Nobel

October 4, 2011
Two Americans were among those honored as this year's winners of the Physics Nobel.

Three astronomers were gifted with the Physics Nobel for their research into the expansion of the universe. The winners were Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University; and Adam G. Riess of the Space Telescope Institute and Johns Hopkins University.

The three were honored for their discovery of and subsequent research into dark matter. Perlmutter. Based largely on their research, scientists believe the confounding force is prompting the universe to continually expand.

Two of the researchers were leaders of two competing teams of scientists endeavoring to measure the speed at which the universe is expanding. Scientists have long believed the universe has been continually growing since its birth during the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. Some researchers had posited the universe's expansion was slowing and that it would ultimately lead to so-called Big Crunch, when it would pull back together to its original form.
Perlmutter led the Supernova Cosmology Project in Berkeley, while Schmidt led the rival High-Z Supernova Search Team. Riess was the first to publish a paper regarding dark energy.
The Nobel Prize winners all came to the same conclusion: the universe's expansion was not slowing, but was in fact speeding up. They used the exploding stars known as Type 1a supernovae as gauges by which they based their calculations, leading to their surprising conclusion.

Dark energy is one of the most mysterious forces in the universe, and one that scientists still know relatively about, the BBC reports. It comprises some 70 percent of the universe by mass, researchers contend. Scientists have explained its existence through a theorem Albert Einstein posited that he considered one of his greatest errors, but has proven critical to the study of cosmology.

"Every test we have made has come out perfectly in line with Einstein’s original cosmological constant in 1917," Schmidt asserted.

The discovery of dark energy fundamentally shifted the study of cosmology, experts assert.