Seminar of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of University of Wrocław

Nobel Prize in Physics 2011: The accelerating Universe

prof. dr hab. David Blaschke

In 1998, the Supernova Cosmology Project (Saul Perlmutter) and the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team (Brian P. Schmidt, Adam G. Riess) published independently the result of the work of their teams which concluded that the expansion of the Universe is accelerated. This result contradicted the standard assumptions at that time and caused a „revolution in cosmology” with far-reaching consequences which earned these three authors the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011. For explaining their results one had either to assume a new, so far unknown form of matter in the cosmic equation of state („dark energy” solution) or one had to modify the cosmological equations of motion which followed from Einsteins field equations („modified gravity” solution). In this seminar, I will explain the observational results and their interpretation and give an outlook to the present status and perspectives in this field of research.