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Congratulations to Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess, and also Evan and Cusp

By drorzel on October 4, 2011.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae." Ethan will presumably have a post with about a gigabyte worth of images in it shortly, or if you prefer your information in book form, you can read Richard Panek's The Four Percent Universe, which has lots of detail about what they did, including the rivalry between the different groups. As a bonus, the UK edition has a blurb from yours truly...

But that's not what you really want to know-- what you really want to know is who won the betting pool? Because the prize(s) don't cost me anything, I'll split this two ways: Evan Berkowitz in comment #3 mentioned Perlmutter, and Cusp in comment #17 mentioned Schmidt. Congratulations to both of them.

Evan and Cusp, send me email from the address you left when you commented, and we'll arrange your prizes. The rest of you, better luck next year, though there's still time to enter guesses for the lesser prizes...

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Wow, Adam was an old classmate of mine at the 'tute. Congrats Adam!

By Kelly Davis (not verified) on 04 Oct 2011 #permalink

(Actually I should have said, background effect in combination with some kind of MOND, but which still does not handle the specific apparent distributions found for DM, true?)

Hmmm - Chad - I emailed you but no response.