Science librarians analysis of the 2011 nobel prize in physics: The work of saul perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 was awarded to scientists from two different research collaborations that independently and contemporaneously discovered from observations of distant supernovae that the universe's expansion is accelerating. One half of the prize was awarded to Saul Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess. The findings, first reported in 1998, shocked the cosmology community, as the prevailing theory at the time favored a closed or steady-state universe, rather than one wherein the universe expands faster and faster, ultimately ending as a cold, dark, (largely) empty space. It was, perhaps, fortuitous that two independent groups came up with the same result using different methods, as it offered an immediate initial verification of the, at the time, very controversial results. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.