Brian Schmidt took part in an AusSMC background briefing in May 2009 where he described in simple terms the concept of dark energy and supernovae.  To listen to that presentation click here.

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Professor Suzanne Cory is President of the Australian Academy of Science

“On behalf of all his colleagues at the Australian Academy of Science, I offer my warmest congratulations to Brian Schmidt and his colleagues for this richly deserved accolade. This is a great day for Australian science.

Over just a few short years in the 1990s, Brian and his American colleague Professor Adam Riess discovered through their study of exploding stars – supernovae – that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Racing to the same discovery was Professor Saul Perlmutter in the United States, who shares the Nobel Prize with Schmidt and Riess. This discovery had a profound and immediate effect on cosmology. Previously it had been thought that the expansion of the universe was slowing, or proceeding at a steady rate. Astrophysicists say the finding that the expansion is in fact accelerating has completely altered our understanding of the universe and opened up important new fields in the study of time and dark energy.

For his part in this astounding discovery, Brian Schmidt was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2008. He is an energetic and highly respected member of the Australian National University’s astronomy and astrophysics team.”

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Professor Bryan Gaensler is Australian Laureate Fellow at The University of Sydney and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO)

“Most science is incremental. Even the Nobel Prize often goes to what might seem to the general public to be an obscure or technical discovery. But in 2011, the Nobel Prize for Physics has recognised one of the most jaw-dropping, unexpected, craziest results in the history of science – the Universe is accelerating! The prize deservedly goes to the leaders of the teams who first measured this effect – Australia’s Brian Schmidt, and Americans Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess.

It’s hard to overstate the profound fundamental change that this discovery wrought on all of cosmology and discovery. In barely more than a decade, we have gone from a comfortable picture of a mainly empty, gently decelerating, Universe, to broad acceptance that we live in a bizarre cosmos, suffused with as-yet-unexplained Dark Energy, tearing itself apart as it gains speed in all directions.

The underlying concept was simple enough – that distant supernova explosions could be used as ‘standard candles’ to measure the distance scale of the Universe. But the brilliance of Schmidt, Perlmutter and Riess was in the execution: these supernovae are rare and faint, and even just finding them right after they occur is a feat in itself. But then one needs to carefully calibrate and correct for a myriad of obfuscating and subtle effects in order to tease out the faint signal of the accelerating Universe. It is a testament to the expertise and skill of these astronomers that not only were they able to convince themselves of this weak effect to a level such that they were comfortable in publishing their work, but that after publication, the results were quickly accepted and applauded by the community rather than questioned or queried. The combination of brilliance, exquisite care and dogged determination that Schmidt, Perlmutter, Riess and their teams applied to their work has been rewarded by a Nobel Prize.

Beyond the celebration of these three Laureates, special acknowledgement must also go to Professor Robert Kirshner of Harvard University. Bob Kirshner was the PhD advisor and mentor for both Schmidt and Riess, and was very much the initial inspiration and motivation behind the team’s search for the supernovae that led to this momentous discovery. The Nobel limit of three Laureates per year means some tough calls inevitably need to be made. Kirshner’s key contribution and involvement in this work should not be overlooked.

Australia has much to celebrate by the award going to our own Brian Schmidt. Media reports might claim Schmidt as an ‘American-Australian’ or an ‘adopted Australian’, but make no mistake: despite his Montanan/Alaskan twang, Schmidt is an Australian scientist who did his Nobel-prize work in Australia, and is still very much an active researcher, leader and mentor within Australian astronomy. Beyond his outstanding research record as recognised by the Nobel committee today, what sets Brian apart is his unstinting commitment to Australian science – he is extraordinarily generous with his time for students, public events, review panels and committees; he often takes sides in debates that are to the detriment of his own interests but represent what’s best for the community; and he has even funded research activities at ANU out of his own personal funds when no other money was available. A devoted family man, a talented viniculturist, a good friend to many within Australian astronomy, and now a Nobel Laureate – congratulations to Brian Schmidt!”

Declaration of conflict of interest: Brian Schmidt and Bryan Gaensler are collaborators within the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO)

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Dr Cathy Foley, President of Science & Technology Australia

“The Nobel Prize and the tremendous impact the work of scientists can have reminds us all of the long‐term benefits of investment in research and the importance of fostering a culture of inquiry. This award is testament to the quality research performed by Australian scientists who generate under 3 per cent of the world’s knowledge. Professor Brian Schmidt is an inspiration to us all.”

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Dr Marc Duldig is President of the Australian Institute of Physics

“The Australian Institute of Physics congratulates Brian Schmidt, Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess on the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.

They discovered that the Universe isn’t just expanding. The rate of expansion is increasing. Their discovery transformed astronomy. Today scientists are searching for dark energy – in part to explain their discovery.

Brian Schmidt, from ANU in Canberra, led one of two competing teams. But there were several other Australians in both teams including CSIRO’s Brian Boyle and Swinburne’s Warrick Couch. The two teams: the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search Team, discovered that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

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 traveling 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 has developed 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.”

Background information courtesy of Science in Public and the Gruber Foundation