2011 Nobel Prize In Physics 119
brindafella writes "Thirteen years ago, two teams of astronomers and physicists independently made the same stark discovery: Not only is the universe expanding like a vast inflating balloon, but its expansion is speeding up. The two teams have now been recognized with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Half of the prize will go to Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, who led the Supernova Cosmology Project. The other half will be shared by Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, who led the High-z Supernova Search Team, and Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who worked on High-z. In essence, they proved that Einstein's 'biggest mistake' (the cosmological constant, to create a 'stable universe') was actually a clever theoretical prediction that there was something else happening — dark energy."
Very depressing! (Score:3, Funny)
Not only are the galaxies going to fly apart but our solar system, the planets, our bodies, our cells and ultimately even our atoms (and subatomic particles!). I think only photons or other massless particles will be spared. :(
I know the Nobel committee said the Universe will end in Ice not Fire but it seems more like a great empty VOID.
So... is there a way to harness this "dark energy"? Like attaching a rope between two objects (planets?) and let the universe try to pull it apart? Or would the rope have to be massless? Or maybe there is a more direct way of harnessing this energy? (anti-gravity?)
IAVONAP (I am very obviously not a physicist).