2011 Nobel Prize in Physics
| Nobel Prize in Physics | |
|---|---|
   |
|
| Awarded for | "The discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" |
| Date | 4 October 2011 |
| Location | |
| Country | Sweden |
| Presented by | Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences |
| Reward(s) | 8 million SEK ($1M, €0.9M) |
| First awarded | 1901 |
| 2011 laureates | Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess |
| Official website | www |
The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2011. One half of it was awarded to Saul Perlmutter, head of the Supernova Cosmology Product at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the other half was awarded to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess, both leaders of the High-Z Supernova Team. Their prize was awarded "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae."
Since the discovery by Hubble, scientists knew that the universe was expanding. These two teams of scientists used Type 1a supernovae to measure the rate of the expansion of the universe. Although they expected to see a deceleration in the rate of expansion, they instead measured an acceleration in the expansion of the universe. This landmark discovery is the principal reason why dark energy is posited to exist in the universe
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