Nobel Prize Winner Brian Schmidt - Physics 2011

[Applause] I'm here at the Mount Strow Observatory to talk to one of this year's Nobel Prize winners for physics, Professor Brian Schmidt.

"Still feels kind of weird. I don't know, I don't really feel like a Nobel Prize winner when I go and say, 'Okay, got Heisenberg, got Einstein.' Doesn't seem quite... well, that's an extraordinary honor, so you know, congratulations to you."

"Um, so can you tell us why have you been awarded this prize?"

"So in 1998, uh, Adam Reese was one of the other co-recipients and I, uh, working with a team of 18 other people, discovered that the universal expansion, the cosmic expansion of the universe, was speeding up. And that was the wrong direction. We had expected gravity to cause the universe to slow down. And so the fact that the universe was speeding up meant that gravity was not working as we had expected. We think that's because about 73% of the universe is something we called Dark Energy, something we didn't know existed before, and that causes gravity to push rather than pull."

"Does it actually cause gravity to change?"

"Well, it means that we always think the gravity always pulls. But according to Einstein, the way gravity works really depends on the material itself and energy tied to space. Gravity pushes, it doesn't pull."

"So do we have any sort of hints as to what this energy in space could be?"

"Well, Einstein said it might just be energy that's just there, but it would be nice to have a better explanation than that. And honestly, no, we do not have any hints of what it might be."

"So why is this result so remarkable? Why are people so excited about it?"

"You know, it's big when you discover 73% of everything there is. You know, that's overturning what we expected, and it's weird. It's not even normal stuff; it's weird stuff. And so, you know, I think it highlights either that we were just missing this huge part of the universe before, or that somehow gravity and quantum mechanics, which we know we don't have a theory for, are playing tricks with physics in a way that we don't quite have sorted out. And so I guess some of the hope is that maybe we can use these observations to probe the link between gravity and quantum mechanics and hopefully potentially sort that out."

"Have you heard about this study that says that Nobel Prize winners live a few years longer than similar scientists who are shortlisted for the prize but don't actually win?"

"Wow, I have not heard that. Uh, how are you feeling? Are you feeling healthier now?"

"Uh, no, actually, I'm not feeling... kind of feeling stressed. So, uh, we'll see. Maybe in the long term, I think it should pay off. Well, I'm hoping it's because of good wine and things I get to drink."

"Of course. Alright, well thank you so much for having a chat with me today."

"Yeah, my pleasure. Appreciate it."