A Johns Hopkins University professor is celebrating this morning after being awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.
Adam Riess, an astronomy and physics professor, won for helping to discover that the universe is expanding at an increasingly faster rate.
Riess, 41, shares the prize with two other scientists, an American, Saul Perlmutter, and U.S.-Australian citizen Brian Schmidt. They worked on two separate research teams during the 1990s and attempted to map the universe’s expansion by using telescopes to study and analyze supernovas, or exploding stars.
They discovered, to their surprise, that galaxies were actually racing away from each other at continually increasing speeds.
Riess said he got a phone call at about 5:30 this morning, and several Swedish men were on the line, at which point, “I knew it wasn’t Ikea.”
“My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know this would happen ever,” Riess said in a telephone interview with the AP.
Riess and the other scientists originally discovered that the universe could be expanding at faster and faster speeds back in 1998. This contradicts conventional scientific wisdom that the universe’s expansion should be slowing down because of what Riess calls the “gravitational glue” of the rest of the universe.
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
That revelation led to the discovery of what’s called dark energy, which is believed to be the catalyst in the universe’s increasing expansion.
Riess said he wanted to study dinosaurs as a child and didn’t use a telescope until graduate school, but found the universe awe-inspiring.
“Most of it’s a mystery,” Riess said. “If we very carefully study this ancient tired light we can get some clues as to what really is the universe.”
Riess, Perlmutter and Schmidt will receive their awards Dec. 10 in Stockholm.
