Nobel Laureate in Physics Brian Schmidt to speak at UH Mānoa

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Donna Bebber, (808) 741-1741
Institute for Astronomy
Posted: May 18, 2012

Brian Schmidt, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Brian Schmidt, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Brian Schmidt, Nobel Laureate in Physics, will speak on “The Accelerating Universe,” at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 7, at Kennedy Theatre on the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa campus. The lecture, presented by the UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA), is the first in a series called the “Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe” that will feature Nobel-laureate-level speakers.  Tickets to the event are free and can be obtained by going to http://the-accelerating-universe.ticketleap.com/the-accelerating-universe/

 

In 1998, two teams traced back the expansion of the universe over billions of years and discovered that this expansion is accelerating, a startling discovery that suggests that more than 70 percent of the cosmos is contained in a previously unknown form of mass/energy called “dark energy.” Schmidt, leader of the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team, will describe this discovery and explain how astronomers have used observations to track our universe’s history back more than 13 billion years, leading them to ponder the ultimate fate of the cosmos.

Raised in Montana and Alaska, Schmidt received undergraduate degrees in physics and astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1989, and a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University in 1993. He joined the staff of the Australian National University in 1995, and is now a laureate fellow at the ANU’s Mount Stromlo Observatory.

In 1994, he and Nicholas Suntzeff (Texas A&M University) formed the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team, a group of 20 astronomers on five continents that includes IfA’s John Tonry. They used distant exploding stars to trace the expansion of the universe back in time. This group’s discovery of an accelerating universe was named Science Magazine’s Breakthrough of the Year for 1998. In 2011, Schmidt received the Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Adam Riess and Saul Perlmutter, for this work.

Schmidt is continuing to use exploding stars to study the universe, and is leading Mount Stromlo’s effort to build the SkyMapper telescope, a new facility that will provide a comprehensive digital map of the southern sky from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths.

For more information about this and other astronomy special events, go to http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/specialevents/.


Founded in 1967, the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa conducts research into galaxies, cosmology, stars, planets, and the sun. Its faculty and staff are also involved in astronomy education, deep space missions, and in the development and management of the observatories on Haleakala and Mauna Kea.

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