Nobel prize winners Physics 2011
Have you ever wondered what is happening to the Universe? The observations made by Nobel Prize Winners physics 2011 show that the Universe is disintegrating fast. Does it cause of worry? There is no need for worry now but the discovery was a bit of surprise even for the scientists.
Some historical Background for Nobel Prize Winners Physics 2011
How do they measure the distance to stars?
During the beginning of 20th century, there were no means of measuring the distance to stars easily. American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt was working on analyzing photographs of pulsating stars, called Cepheids and she found that distance of a star can be estimated using the brightness of a star. The dimmer the star, the more distant it is. Then scientists developed a standard candle for the purpose of comparison and then it became easy to measure the distance of any star.
Universe is growing
In the 1920s, astronomers could get the larget telescope Mount Wilson inCaliforniaand with its help checked up the galaxies. They found that the galaxies are moving away from us concluding that universe is growing.
Albert Einstein’s Genius proved once again by Nobel Prize Winners Physics 2011
What was observed in 1920 was already demonstrated in theory by Albert Einstein. According to his calculations while working on general theory of relativity, he found that universe is not stable and it much be either growing or shrinking. To factor this in his calculations, he used a constant called the cosmological constant.
In later years Einstein felt that he was wrong in assuming such a constant. However the 2011 physics nobel prize work proves that Einstein was right!
So What did they find in 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics
2011 Nobel Prize Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011 was awared to
(1) Saul Perlmutter, The Supernova Cosmology Project
LawrenceBerkeleyNational Laboratory andUniversityofCalifornia,
Berkeley,CA,USA
and
(2) Jointly to
Brian P. Schmidt
The High-z Supernova Search Team
AustralianNationalUniversity,
Weston Creek,Australia
and
Adam G. Riess
The High-z Supernova Search Team
JohnsHopkinsUniversityand Space Telescope Science Institute,
Baltimore,MD,USA
“for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”
As the announcement states, both the above teams observed Supernovae or exploding stars and found that Universe is fast expanding.
They expected to find that Universe is more stable compared to last century’s observations but to thier surprise, they found in the contrary.
This new discovery made by Nobel Prize Winners Physics 2011 is going to throw more understanding on the nature of Universe in the coming years.