Cosmology group
The Supernova Cosmology Project is one of two research teams that determined the likelihood of an
accelerating universe and therefore a positive
cosmological constant , using data from the
redshift of
Type Ia supernovae .
[1] The project is headed by
Saul Perlmutter at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , with members from
Australia ,
Chile ,
France ,
Portugal ,
Spain ,
Sweden , the
United Kingdom , and the
United States .
This discovery was named "Breakthrough of the Year for 1998" by
Science Magazine
[2] and, along with the
High-z Supernova Search Team , the project team won the 2007
Gruber Prize in Cosmology
[3] and the 2015
Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics .
[4] In 2011, Perlmutter was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, alongside
Adam Riess and
Brian P. Schmidt from the High-z team.
[5]
Findings
Both the Super Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, another team who was doing the same research, expected to find that the universe is either expanding then contracting as one way to explain the expanding universe idea or the universe must be expanding at a slow rate that will slow over time.
[6] However, in January 1998, the Supernova Cosmology project presented evidence that the expansion of the universe is not slowing at all and is in reality accelerating, citing Einstein's previously dismissed cosmological constant, Λ, which potentially includes up to 70% of the universe's total mass-energy density.
[7]
Theory validation
In order to determine what was happening to the universe, the researchers had to measure the speed of astronomical objects that are travelling away from us as well as how far away these objects actually are. In order to do any of this, the researchers had to find a standard light source that was bright enough to be seen with our telescopes due to the large distances away these objects would be. They chose to use Type Ia Supernovae, exploding stars, as their standard light source.
[6]
Methods
Type Ia supernovae are very bright
standard candles , which makes it possible to calculate their distance to earth from the observed luminosity. Type Ia supernovae are rare in most galaxies, only occurring about two or three times in a thousand years. Before the Supernova Cosmology Project, it was difficult to find supernovae due to lesser telescopes. However, by scanning the night sky over individual periods of three weeks astronomers were able to find up to two dozen per session, giving them enough supernovae observations to conduct their study.
[8]
Project members
The team members are:
[4]
[9]
Saul Perlmutter ,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Gregory Aldering ,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Brian J. Boyle ,
Australia Telescope National Facility
Shane Burns ,
Colorado College
Patricia G. Castro,
Instituto Superior Técnico ,
Lisbon
Warrick Couch ,
Swinburne University of Technology
Susana Deustua,
American Astronomical Society
Richard Ellis ,
California Institute of Technology
Sebastien Fabbro,
Instituto Superior Técnico ,
Lisbon
Alexei Filippenko ,
University of California, Berkeley (later a member of the
High-z Supernova Search Team )
Andrew Fruchter,
Space Telescope Science Institute
Gerson Goldhaber ,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ariel Goobar,
University of Stockholm
Donald Groom,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Isobel Hook,
University of Oxford
Mike Irwin ,
University of Cambridge
Alex Kim,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Matthew Kim
Robert Knop,
Vanderbilt University
Julia C. Lee,
Harvard University
Chris Lidman,
European Southern Observatory
Thomas Matheson,
NOAO Gemini Science Center
Richard McMahon ,
University of Cambridge
Richard Muller ,
University of California, Berkeley
Heidi Newberg ,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Peter Nugent,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Nelson Nunes,
University of Cambridge
Reynald Pain,
CNRS-IN2P3 ,
Paris
Nino Panagia,
Space Telescope Science Institute
Carl Pennypacker ,
University of California, Berkeley
Robert Quimby ,
The University of Texas
Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente ,
University of Barcelona
Bradley E. Schaefer ,
Louisiana State University
Nicholas Walton,
University of Cambridge
References
External links
Classes Physics of Related Progenitors Remnants Discovery Lists Notable Research
Mathematics
Fundamental physics
Nima Arkani-Hamed ,
Alan Guth ,
Alexei Kitaev ,
Maxim Kontsevich ,
Andrei Linde ,
Juan Maldacena ,
Nathan Seiberg ,
Ashoke Sen ,
Edward Witten (2012)
Special :
Stephen Hawking ,
Peter Jenni ,
Fabiola Gianotti (ATLAS),
Michel Della Negra ,
Tejinder Virdee ,
Guido Tonelli ,
Joseph Incandela (CMS) and
Lyn Evans (LHC) (2013)
Alexander Polyakov (2013)
Michael Green and
John Henry Schwarz (2014)
Saul Perlmutter and members of the
Supernova Cosmology Project ;
Brian Schmidt ,
Adam Riess and members of the
High-Z Supernova Team (2015)
Special :
Ronald Drever ,
Kip Thorne ,
Rainer Weiss and contributors to
LIGO project (2016)
Yifang Wang ,
Kam-Biu Luk and the
Daya Bay team ,
Atsuto Suzuki and the
KamLAND team,
Kōichirō Nishikawa and the
K2K /
T2K team,
Arthur B. McDonald and the
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory team,
Takaaki Kajita and
Yōichirō Suzuki and the
Super-Kamiokande team (2016)
Joseph Polchinski ,
Andrew Strominger ,
Cumrun Vafa (2017)
Charles L. Bennett ,
Gary Hinshaw ,
Norman Jarosik ,
Lyman Page Jr. ,
David Spergel (2018)
Special :
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Charles Kane and
Eugene Mele (2019)
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Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (2019)
The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (2020)
Eric Adelberger ,
Jens H. Gundlach and
Blayne Heckel (2021)
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Steven Weinberg (2021)
Hidetoshi Katori and
Jun Ye (2022)
Charles H. Bennett ,
Gilles Brassard ,
David Deutsch ,
Peter W. Shor (2023)
John Cardy and
Alexander Zamolodchikov (2024)
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David Botstein ,
Lewis C. Cantley ,
Hans Clevers ,
Titia de Lange ,
Napoleone Ferrara ,
Eric Lander ,
Charles Sawyers ,
Robert Weinberg ,
Shinya Yamanaka and
Bert Vogelstein (2013)
James P. Allison ,
Mahlon DeLong ,
Michael N. Hall ,
Robert S. Langer ,
Richard P. Lifton and
Alexander Varshavsky (2014)
Alim Louis Benabid ,
Charles David Allis ,
Victor Ambros ,
Gary Ruvkun ,
Jennifer Doudna and
Emmanuelle Charpentier (2015)
Edward Boyden ,
Karl Deisseroth ,
John Hardy ,
Helen Hobbs and
Svante Pääbo (2016)
Stephen J. Elledge ,
Harry F. Noller ,
Roeland Nusse ,
Yoshinori Ohsumi ,
Huda Zoghbi (2017)
Joanne Chory ,
Peter Walter ,
Kazutoshi Mori ,
Kim Nasmyth ,
Don W. Cleveland (2018)
C. Frank Bennett and
Adrian R. Krainer ,
Angelika Amon ,
Xiaowei Zhuang ,
Zhijian Chen (2019)
Jeffrey M. Friedman ,
Franz-Ulrich Hartl ,
Arthur L. Horwich ,
David Julius ,
Virginia Man-Yee Lee (2020)
David Baker ,
Catherine Dulac ,
Dennis Lo ,
Richard J. Youle [
de ] (2021)
Jeffery W. Kelly ,
Katalin Karikó ,
Drew Weissman ,
Shankar Balasubramanian ,
David Klenerman and
Pascal Mayer (2022)
Clifford P. Brangwynne ,
Anthony A. Hyman ,
Demis Hassabis ,
John Jumper ,
Emmanuel Mignot ,
Masashi Yanagisawa (2023)
Carl June ,
Michel Sadelain ,
Sabine Hadida ,
Paul Negulescu ,
Fredrick Van Goor ,
Thomas Gasser ,
Ellen Sidransky and
Andrew Singleton (2024)