Type Ia SNe, the discovery of Cosmic Acceleration, the Nobel Prize 2011, and all that fuzz

Alejandro Clocchiatti
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was given to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess for the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe by measuring precise distances to high redshift Type Ia Supernovae. The 1998 discovery was the surprising end of one of the large projects of 20th century cosmology. In addition, the discovery was the result of the long evolution of research lines that transformed supernova in the best distance estimator for cosmologically relevant distances at
the current time. Also, it was the final end of an exciting race between two competing teams that struggled for years to arrive first to the result. The fact that each of the teams was made up from researchers with different cultures (i.e. physicists and astronomers) adds spice to the saga.
As a member of one of the teams I had a privileged view of the research, the impact of the result, and the story. In this conference I will cover the basic framework of cosmology, astrophysics and technology that allowed us to discover the acceleration of the Universe expansion, back in 1998.

Este coloquio se llevara a cabo en el Miércoles 10 de Octubre del 2012a las 14:30hs en el aula del Edificio IAFE, Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad de Buenos Aires.