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Supernovae, the Accelerating Cosmos, and Dark Energy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Brian Schmidt*
Affiliation:
Reserach School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australia National University, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra ACT 2611, Australia email: brian@mso.anu.edu.au
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Abstract

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Type Ia supernovae remain one of Astronomy's most precise tools for measuring distances in the Universe. I describe the cosmological application of these stellar explosions, and chronicle how they were used to discover an accelerating Universe in 1998 - an observation which is most simply explained if more than 70% of the Universe is made up of some previously undetected form of ‘Dark Energy’. Over the intervening 13 years, a variety of experiments have been completed, and even more proposed to better constrain the source of the acceleration. I review the range of experiments, describing the current state of our understanding of the observed acceleration, and speculate about future progress in understanding Dark Energy.

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Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2015