The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe

About this video

2011 Nobel Prize winner, Saul Perlmutter, on the accelerating expansion of our Universe.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was divided between three American-born scientists for their discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, and not slowing down as previously thought.

One half went to physicist Saul Perlmutter from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The other half was awarded jointly to astronomers Brian P. Schmidt from the Australian National University, and Adam G. Reiss at the John Hopkins University.

In this mini-documentary produced in 2008 by KQED and featuring prize-winner Saul Perlmutter, we find out how the scientists observed the red-shift and brightness of distant supernovae to discover the rate at which our Universe has expanded over billions of years.