Physics and Astronomy Colloquium
Thursday, November 3, 2011
4:00 pm
Hawking Auditorium

Nicholas B. Suntzeff
Dept of Physics and Astronomy
Mitchell Institute of Fundamental Physics and Astronomy
Texas A&M University

"The Accelerating Universe"

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the 
acceleration of the Universe to members of two teams of astronomers: 
Saul Perlmutter of UC Berkeley and LBNL representing the Supernova 
Cosmolgoy Project, and Brian Schmdt with Adam Riess representing the 
High Z Team.

Both teams used a sample of ~30 nearby supernovae to measure the 
distances to the high redshift sample, and also used these supernovae as 
the anchor for the discovery. These supernovae and the calibration to 
standard candle values were discovered by our Calan/Tololo Team between 
1989-1994. The Hubble diagram from these supernovae also led to the most 
accurate determination of the local Hubble constant when combined with 
HST observations of Cepheid variables.

What is not well known is that the High Z Team was formed as the 
continuation of the Calan/Tololo Team combined with graduate students 
and postdocs in the US and European astronomers at ESO, to measure the 
deceleration of the Universe - q0. Brian Schmidt and I co-founded the 
HZT in 1994 in Chile.

In this talk, I will describe a personal history and science of the 
discovery of the use of supernovae to measure distances, and their use 
in the measurement of what we thought would be deceleration.

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Refreshments will be served at 3:45pm on the first floor of the MIST 
building