Dark Energy Wins $500,000 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize

Dark energy is believed to be the force driving the universe apart at accelerating rates. The Gruber Foundation 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize goes to the two research teams that first offered proof of the universe's accelerating expansion.

The Berkeley Lab press release says the teams were located in California and Australia and were headed by Saul Perlmutter (University of California at Berkeley) and Brian Schmidt (Australian National University). The tool the teams used for measuring the expansion of the universe was the same. And the search to confirm the accepted theory that gravity would slow and possibly reverse the expansion was the same. But they were in a break-neck competition against one another to gather proof for a decelerating expansion of the universe.

Instead of confirming what science had established as accepted cosmology, both teams--simultaneously--announced a surprise revolutionary new discovery in 1998: The expansion of the universe is accelerating. Brian Boyle, who is now Director of the Australian Telescope National Facility, was then a member of Saul Perlmutter's team and his comment upon becoming a joint recipient of the Gruber Cosmology Prize was: "We set out to refine conventional wisdom. But instead, we overthrew it," as reported in a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Researdh Organization (CSIRO) media release.

Now, the Gruber Foundation is honoring the two teams who simultaneously made the cosmological breakthrough that was announced in 1998. The award is being made because, in the words of the Gruber Foundation, "Their discovery led to the idea of an expansion force, dubbed dark energy. And it suggested that the fate of the universe is to just keep expanding, faster and faster." The Prize money of $500,000 will be split between Perlmutter and Schmidt and the teams which they led: the Supernova Cosmology Project headed by Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team headed by Brian Schmidt.

Dark energy is defined by Dr. Jerome Drexler, noted inventor of laser technology and cosmology author and founder of LaserCard Corporation, as a "hypothetical form of energy assumed to permeate all space and to have negative pressure resulting in repulsion gravitational force." Scientific work on dark energy has continued and modifications to the theory of its nature are being proposed. For instance, physicist and cosmologist Michael Turner of Chicago University has said that despite not having a clue as to what dark energy is, he theorizes that dark energy, which is diffuse, is probably not found in galaxies or even in clusters of galaxies, but beyond such clusters.

The Berkeley Lab of the Univesiry of California at Berkeley says that dark energy is believed to constitute approximately three-quarters of the density of the universe, with dark matter, which was recently mapped, constituting the majority of the rest. Matter takes up surprisingly little space. Dark energy, which "stretches space and works against the mutual gravitational attraction of ordinary matter and energy," was discovered when an idea for measuring the expansion of the universe first suggested in the 1930s was implemented by the two supernova teams.

Type Ia supernovae, which modern technology proved to be highly dependable "standard candles," were located using new telescope techniques facilitating time-span analysis of multiple galaxies. These dependable standard candles--points of light that lend themselves to competent calculations of distance relative to brightness--permitted a plot graph to be made of distances and rates and directions of travel of supernovae of the Ia type by using these supernovae Ia "explosions.at different distances to track the size of the Universe at different times, and hence how its rate of acceleration had changed over time," as stated in the media release from the CSIRO.

Perlmutter team member physicist Gerson Goldhaber recalls for Berkeley Lab: "I was amazed when I looked at the graph we had just drawn. We had set out to measure the deceleration of the universe, and found it was accelerating. This was one of the eureka moments...."

Now: What is dark energy? Is it what Dr. Drexler suggests: Is it synchrotron radiation from relativistic protons of dark matter moving across extragalactic magnetic fields? Stay tuned....

Paul Preuss, "Gruber Cosmology Prize Awarded to Discoverers of Dark Energy." Berkely Lab Press Release. URL: http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1025300