Astronomers Win Nobel for Discovering Universe's Expansion

Adam Riess, Saul Permutter, and Brian Schmidt are honoured for changing our understanding of the universe and dark matter.

The Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to three astronomers who were the first to hypothesize that dark matter is the force behind the universe's continued expansion. In the 1990s, Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter, and Brian Schmidt, all Americans, were on competing astronomical teams that were studying supernovas to see how fast the universe was contracting, as was widely believed at the time. But in 1998, both teams concluded that the universe was actually expanding due to the little-understood antigravity tendencies of dark matter, which is believed to make up about 70 per cent of the universe's mass. Perlmutter will take half of the $1.5-million award, while Riess and Schmidt will split the other half. And in other Nobel news, the Nobel Foundation has determined that recently deceased Ralph Steinman will get to keep the prize for his work on the immune system.