Accelerating expansion of the universe and dark energy
Expansión acelerada del universo y energía oscura
- Date
- 1998 · confidence high
- Place
- Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, California / Cerro Tololo, Chile
- Credited to
- Saul Perlmutter; Brian Schmidt; Adam Riess
- People
- 👤 Adam Riess1969–👤 Brian P. Schmidt1967–👤 Saul Perlmutter1959–
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Distant type Ia supernovae appear fainter than expected: the expansion of the universe is accelerating, driven by a vacuum energy that makes up 68 per cent of the cosmos. It revives Einstein's cosmological constant and poses the greatest open problem in physics.
Coordinate with astronomy. Two independent teams (Supernova Cosmology Project and High-z Supernova Search Team); 2011 Nobel Prize. DESI (2024-2025) suggests dark energy might vary over time. Merged with 'Dark energy and the acceleration of cosmic expansion' (duplicate, 23-09-2026).
What it led to
- Lambda-CDM cosmological model
- Cosmological constant problem
- Dark energy surveys (DES, Euclid, DESI)
- Speculation on the fate of the universe
- Lambda-CDM model
- Reintroduction of the cosmological constant
- Euclid, DESI and Roman missions
Built on
- Expansion of the universe (Hubble-Lemaître law)1927-1929
- Cosmic microwave background radiation1965
- General relativity and the cosmological constant
- Type Ia supernovae as standard candles (Phillips, 1993)
Made possible
- Planck precision cosmology2013-2018
- Hints of evolving dark energy (DESI)2024-2025
- Sky-survey telescopes (Euclid, Rubin)
- Wide-field CCD cameras