Surveying the Accelerating Universe with Supernovae

The School of Physics welcomes Dr. Jha, an assistant professor at Rutgers University and a member of the 1998 research team led by 2011 Nobel Prize Winners Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, on "Surveying theAccelerating Universe with Supernovae."Presented on March 5, 2012 from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm in Room 1116 of the Marcus Nanotechnology building.Runtime: 63:00 minutes.In 1998 two rival teams of astronomers studying exploding white dwarf stars, called type Ia supernovae, came to the surprising conclusion that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. This discovery of "the accelerating Universe" ushered in a revolution in our cosmological understanding. I will describe the steps leading to this discovery, and how observations of supernovae from telescopes on the ground and in space can be used to trace the history of cosmic expansion. The continued study of these stellar explosions will shed light on the mysterious "dark energy" that dominates and drives our accelerating Universe