Prof. Schmidt, a U.S.-Australian citizen, shares the Nobel Prize in
Physics for 2011 with American scientists Saul Perlmutter and Adam G.
Riess for their simultaneous discovery in 1998 that the universe is
expanding at an ever-accelerating rate.
"I feel weak at the knees," Prof. Schmidt told journalists who had
gathered at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Nobel news
conference. Speaking from his home in Canberra, Australia, Prof.
Schmidt said that he did not expect the Prize but he was happy to
receive it.
"It is something that people occasionally mention, but one thinks that
it is probably not going to happen," Prof. Schmidt said. Asked what he
planned to do now, he joked that he was going to wander around a bit
and then try to sleep. (It was 9 p.m. in Australia when the news
broke.)
The 44-year-old American who grew up in Alaska and now lives in
Canberra said that he would celebrate on Wednesday when he is due to
teach a class in cosmology at the Australian National University.
The Nobel citation said that the trio were being awarded "for the
discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through
observations of distant supernovae", or exploding stars.
One half of the total Prize amount of 10 million Swedish krona (Over
7.1 crore Rupees) would go to Perlmutter from the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and University of California in the U.S., and the
other half jointly to Prof. Schmidt and Prof. Riess, who is with the
Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in the
U.S..
For almost a century, the universe has been known to be expanding as a
consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the
discovery that this expansion is accelerating has helped to unveil a
universe that to a large extent is unknown to science.
If the expansion will continue to speed up, driven by an enigmatic
"dark energy", the universe will probably end in ice, the Nobel
committee for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in
a statement.
While Prof. Perlmutter began his research in 1988, a rival team headed
by Prof. Schmidt, and comprising Prof. Riess, came together at the end
of 1994.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made the announcement in Stockholm
on October 04.
source: http://www.allcurrentaffairs.tk/2011/10/prof-schmidt-wins-nobel-prize-for.html#ixzz1a62hV75j
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