Humans may have to live in an empty universe: Nobel Laureate

Nobel Laureate Prof Brian P Schmidt, a scientist at the Australian National University and Mount Stromlo Observatory said that the universe is accelerating into nothingness.

He was delivering a lecture on supernova at the Indian Institute of Science here on Tuesday.

Brian Schmidt was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011, along with two American scientists Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess, also working on supernova and the cosmos.

Expanding universe

The story began in 1916 when Vento Slipher, an American astronomer, measured the speed of galaxies and found them to be like stars. In 1929, Edwin Hubble said the faster galaxies move, the fainter the stars become. Einstein even retracted his value of the Cosmological Constant, a number that did not fit in with the theories of a static Universe. All these indicated that the Universe is moving.

The theory that held true till then was that the Universe was slowing down or decelerating. Schmidt and Nicholas B Suntzeff formed the High-Z Supernova Search Team in 1994 to measure the expected deceleration of the universe. They spotted their first Supernova SN1995K in 1995.

Schmidt says, “Three hard years later, we found the total sum of mass to be negative; this meant acceleration.”

Their findings were contrary to the prevalent theory that the universe was slowing down. Instead, he and his team had found that the Universe was accelerating and expanding. The findings from another group led by Saul Perlmutter also came to the same conclusion.

In 1993, Mark Philips had said that how fast a Supernova, an exploding star, fades is related to its intrinsic brightness. Supernovae are good distance indicators. All the data for their experiments came from Supernovae. By studying the brightness and redshift (indicates lower frequency and energy of light) of the Supernovae, Schmidt and his team, came to their conclusions about the accelerating Universe.

Schmidt says, “The future of the universe seems to be Dark Energy; it accelerates the Cosmos. Creation of space happens more quickly than light can travel through it. Eventually, we will live in an empty Universe with no neighbours but only our Super Galaxy. Telescopes will lose their use as they will not show anything.”

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