In 1998, two research teams a world apart uncovered a key truth about our universe — it was expanding. Fast. One of the experiments, the Supernova Cosmology Project, was originally a thesis project for Heidi Jo Newberg, now an associate professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy at Rensselaer. Members of the two research teams are now being honored for their discovery with one of the top scientific awards in the field — the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize.

Photo Credit: Rensselaer/Gary Gold

The Gruber Prize honors a leading cosmologist, astronomer, astrophysicist, or scientific philosopher for theoretical, analytical, or conceptual discoveries leading to a fundamental advancement in the field. The $500,000 prize will be shared by the research teams. Newberg and her colleagues join previous Gruber Prize winners that include the originators of the Big Bang theory and the creators of the Hubble Space Telescope.

As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Newberg and her mentors worked to design an experiment to discover the rate at which the expansion of the universe was slowing down, due to gravitational attraction of matter. “It is a formative experience in my career,” says Newberg. “To have been part of an experiment whose results defied the expectations of the larger scientific community.” 

At the same time, research was being conducted by the High-Z Supernova research team based out of Australian National University. The two competing research teams published their papers nearly simultaneously and together transformed conventional thought about our universe. 

During her time with the Supernova Cosmology Project, Newberg and her team worked to measure how fast the universe was expanding. At the time, the universe was believed to be coming to a slow, grinding halt. In order to track the expansion of the universe, the researchers needed a standard by which to measure growth. They used supernovae. Supernovae are dying stars that explode, releasing huge amounts of light and energy in their final death throes. In particular, the researchers looked at Type Ia supernovae that emit a known amount of luminosity at the peak of their brightness before they begin to fizzle out. The researchers tracked these energy peaks in distant Type Ia explosions and compared their known luminosity to their observed brightness here on Earth to calculate the distance of the supernovae from Earth. 

The results surprised everyone. The supernovae were moving farther and farther away into the space frontier, faster and faster. This discovery also gave rise to the idea of dark energy, the force behind the rapid expansion of the universe.

Newberg and the other award recipients will be honored Sept. 7 at the University of Cambridge.

More information on the Gruber Prize can be found at www.gruberprizes.org.

Published July 30, 2007