The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was awarded to the 3 main figures in the discovery of Dark Energy. Half of the award is given to Saul Perlmutter of LBNL. The other half is given to Brian Schmidt of Australian National University and Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins.
This is a rather bold and brave move. While dark energy is considered to be "mainstream" in cosmology, its acceptance is still debatable in many circles, and certainly to the MOND folks. The Nobel prize tends to be more conservative, awarding it to people who has discovered something that is well-documented. Dark energy is still a phenomenon that we are still trying to pin down, as evident by many new efforts, such as DES, etc. that are about to go on line. So it is certainly a bold more (unprecedented?) to award for a discovery that has a degree of certainty that many considers to not be as high as other previous Nobel prize winning discovery..... YET.
And oh, Reuters-Thompson's prediction is wrong again! :)
Zz.
1 comment:
Well, but the prize is not for dark energy, but for "the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae"
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/press.html
Whether or not this expansion is driven by dark energy, this prize remains valid.
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