Discovery of accelerating universe wins Nobel prize

摘要

Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess have been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae". Perlmutter, professor of astrophysics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, receives half of the prize, with the other half being shared between Schmidt, distinguished professor at the Australian National University, and Riess, professor of astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute. Their finding led to a dramatic change in perception of the universe by providing evidence for what has become known as "dark energy".