Photo: NASA, ESA, STScI, Public domain (NASA/ESA Hubble), Wikimedia Commons
Adam G. Riess
Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute
- Research field
- Observational cosmology, supernovae and the expansion rate
Adam Riess was the lead author of the 1998 supernova study that found the expansion of the universe to be accelerating, for which he shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. With the SH0ES team he has since measured the present expansion rate from Cepheid stars and supernovae observed with the Hubble Space Telescope, and obtains a value about 8 percent higher than the standard cosmological model predicts from the cosmic microwave background. The unit uses his 2022 measurement as the reference point of the Hubble tension.
In the masterclass
Section 5 presents the SH0ES measurement of the Hubble constant next to the early-universe values, and Section 4 describes the 1998 discovery of the acceleration.
The research is presented in Unit 15: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Cosmic Structure, in a research spotlight box that explains the result at the level of the unit and links it to the physics you have just learned.