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Niall Byrne
+61 (3) 5253-1391
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Ms. Alyson O'Mahoney
(914) 241-0086 ext. 13
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Bernetia Akin
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| Online Newsroom: |
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
July 17, 2007, New York, New York
– Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt and their teams: the Supernova
Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search Team, will receive
the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize for their discovery that the expansion
of the Universe is accelerating. They will receive the prize at a
ceremony at the University of Cambridge on September 7.
An accelerating universe was a crazy
result that was hard to accept. Yet, two teams, racing neck and neck,
simultaneously came to the same conclusion. Their discovery led to the
idea of an expansion force, dubbed dark energy. And it suggests that
the fate of the universe is to just keep expanding, faster and faster.
The two teams expected to find that the
universe would either expand then contract, or it would expand for ever
but slowing over the millennia. But there were a growing number of
hints that all was not right with the theories of the time. To find out, they not only needed to
be able to measure the speed with which distant objects are travelling
away from us, but also how far away they are. And to do this they
needed standardized light sources — very bright ones that would be
visible to Earth-based telescopes despite being billions of light years
away and billions of years old. The standard light sources they used
were exploding stars — in particular Type Ia supernovae. But finding
them wasn’t easy. Then the analyses over the results turned up very
surprising results. “The data wasn’t behaving as we thought it would,”
says Schmidt. “There was a lot of nervous laughter,” says Perlmutter.
For both teams it was not what they were expecting. For months they
both tried to figure out where they had gone wrong, searching for any
tiny source of error. But the data was right. The accepted model of the
universe was wrong. Today Perlmutter, Schmidt and their
colleagues continue to explore the implications of their work. Schmidt
is planning the SkyMapper project, a telescope to map the southern sky.
Perlmutter is working on a satellite mission that would study
supernovae and the nature of dark energy. The $US500,000 prize will be shared in
four parts: by Schmidt — at the Australian National University; Saul
Perlmutter — at the University of California, Berkeley; and the
fifty-one co-authors of the key papers. The Cosmology Prize honors a leading
cosmologist, astronomer, astrophysicist or scientific philosopher for
theoretical, analytical or conceptual discoveries leading to
fundamental advances in the field.
Since 2001, the Cosmology Prize has
been awarded in collaboration with the International Astronomical
Union. The Foundation’s other international prizes are in Genetics,
Neuroscience, Justice and Women’s Rights. Nominations for the 2008
prizes are now open and close on December 31, 2007.
Profiles of Perlmutter and Schmidt,
photos, background information and nomination details for 2008 are
available online at www.gruberprizes.org.
Media contacts:
In Australia: Niall Byrne, +61 (3) 5253-1391, niall@scienceinpublic.com.au
In the USA: Clare Hagerty, University of Washington, +1 (206) 685-1323, clareh@u.washington.edu
The official citation reads: The Peter and
Patricia Gruber Foundation proudly presents the 2007 Cosmology Prize to
Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt, and to the Supernova Cosmology
Project and the High-z Supernova Search teams, for their discovery that
the expansion of the Universe is currently accelerating.
These observations required the
development of new techniques that use supernovae exploding within
distant galaxies to measure precise distances across a large fraction
of the observable Universe.
The discovery of the accelerated expansion has radically changed our perception of cosmic evolution.
The team members jointly recognized by the prize are:
Saul Perlmutter and the Supernova Cosmology Project team from Australia, Chile, France, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA:
- Gregory Aldering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Brian J. Boyle, Australia Telescope National Facility
- 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 (also a member of the High-z 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
- Richard McMahon, University of Cambridge
- Thomas Matheson, NOAO Gemini Science Center
- 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
- Brad Schaefer, Louisiana State University
- Nicholas Walton, University of Cambridge
And for the High-z Supernova Search Team: Brian Schmidt and his team from the USA, UK, Germany, Chile and Australia:
- Peter Challis, Harvard University
- Alejandro Clocchiatti, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Alan Diercks, Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle
- Alexei V. Filippenko, University of California, Berkeley
- Peter M. Garnavich, University of Notre Dame
- Ronald L. Gilliland, Space Telescope Science Institute
- Craig J. Hogan, University of Washington
- Saurabh Jha, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
- Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University
- Bruno Leibundgut, European Southern Observatory
- Mark M. Phillips, Carnegie Observatories
- David Reiss, Institute for Systems Biology. Seattle
- Adam G. Riess, the Johns Hopkins University
- Robert A. Schommer (Deceased)
- R. Chris Smith, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile
- Jason Spyromilio, European Southern Observatory
- Christopher Stubbs, Harvard University
- Nicholas B. Suntzeff, Texas A&M University
- John L. Tonry, Institute for Astronomy, Honolulu
The key papers reporting their discoveries were
Riess et al., 1998, AJ, 116, 1009, "Observational Evidence from
Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant"
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJ/journal/issues/v116n3/980111/980111.web.pdf
Perlmutter et al. 1999, ApJ, 517, 565, "Measurements of Omega and Lambda from 42 High-Redshift Supernovae"
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v517n2/39148/39148.web.pdf
Laureates of the Gruber Cosmology Prize:
- 2006: John Mather and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Team for studies confirming that our universe was born in a hot Big Bang
- 2005: James E. Gunn for leading the design of a
silicon-based camera for the Hubble Space Telescope and developing the
original concept for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
- 2004:Alan Guth and Andrei Linde for their roles in developing and refining the theory of cosmic inflation
- 2003: Rashid Alievich Sunyaev for his pioneering work on the nature of the cosmic microwave background and its interaction with intervening matter
- 2002: Vera Rubin for discovering that much of the Universe is unseen black matter, through her studies of the rotation of spiral galaxies
- 2001: Martin Rees for his extraordinary intuition in unraveling the complexities of the universe
- Allan R. Sandage and Phillip J. E. (Jim) Peebles:
Sandage for pursuing the true values of the Hubble constant, the
deceleration parameter and the age of the universe; Peebles for
advancing our understanding of how energy and matter formed the rich
patterns of galaxies observed today
The Prize recipients are chosen by the Cosmology Selection Advisory Board. Its members are:
James Peebles, Princeton University;
Ronald Ekers, Australia Telescope National Facility - CSIRO; Jocelyn
Bell Burnell, University of Oxford; Roger Penrose, University of
Oxford; Peter Galison, Harvard University; Simon D.M. White,
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik; Jacqueline Bergeron, Institut
d'Astrophysique-CNRS. Owen Gingerich of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Virginia Trimble of
the University of California Irvine also serve as special cosmology
advisors to the Foundation.
The Gruber Prize Program honors contemporary
individuals in the fields of Cosmology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Justice
and Women’s Rights, whose groundbreaking work provides new models that
inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture. The
Selection Advisory Boards choose individuals whose contributions in
their respective fields advance our knowledge, potentially have a
profound impact on our lives, and, in the case of the Justice and
Women’s Rights Prizes, demonstrate courage and commitment in the face
of significant obstacles.
The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation honors and
encourages educational excellence, social justice and scientific
achievements that better the human condition. For more information
about Foundation guidelines and priorities, please visit
www.gruberprizes.org.
Affiliation with International Astronomical Union
In 2000, the Peter Gruber Foundation and the
International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced an agreement by which
the IAU provides its expertise and contacts with professional
astronomers worldwide for the nomination and selection of Cosmology
Prize winners. Under the agreement, the Peter Gruber Foundation also
funds a fellowship program for young astronomers, with the aim of
promoting the continued recruitment of new talent into the field. The International Astronomical Union,
founded in 1919, is an organization of professional astronomers. It
serves today a membership of more than 9,000 individual astronomers
from 85 countries, worldwide. Information about the activities of the
IAU is available from www.iau.org.
For more information on the Gruber Prizes email
media@gruberprizes.org or contact Bernetia Akin of the Gruber
Foundation at +1 (340) 775-8035 or by mail 140 W 57th St Suite 10C New
York, NY 10019.
Media materials and additional
background information on the Gruber Prizes can be found at our online
newsroom: www.gruberprizes.org/Press.php |
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