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  • I'm here at the Mount Strong Low Observatory to talkto one of this year's Nobel Prize winners for physics Professor Brian Schmidt still feels kind of weird.

  • I don't know.

  • I don't really feel like a Nobel Prize when I go and say, OK, got Heisenberg.

  • Einstein has the same point about that extraordinary honor.

  • So, you know, congratulations to you.

  • So can you tell us why have you been awarded this prize?

  • So in 1998 Adam Reiss is one of the other co recipients.

  • And I, uh, working with the team of 18 other people, discovered that the universal expansion, the cosmic expansion, the universe was speeding up and that was the wrong direction.

  • We had expected gravity to cause the universe to slow down.

  • And so the fact that the universe is speeding up meant that gravity was not working as we had expected.

  • And we think that's because about 73% of the universe is something we called dark energy, something we didn't know existed before.

  • And that causes gravity toe push rather than pull, because it actually caused gravity to change.

  • Well, it means that we always think the gravity always polls, but According to Einstein, the way gravity works really depends on the material itself.

  • Energy tied to space.

  • Gravity pushes.

  • It doesn't pull.

  • So do we have any sort of hints as to what this energy and space could be?

  • Well, Einstein said, it might just be energy that's just there.

  • But it would be nice to have a better explanation than that.

  • And honestly, no, we do not have any hints of what it might be.

  • So why is this result so remarkable?

  • Why are people so excited about it?

  • You know, it's big when you discover 73% of everything there is, you know, that's that's overturning what we expected.

  • And it's weird.

  • It's not even normal stuff.

  • It's weird stuff.

  • And so, you know, I think it it highlights either that we were just missing this huge part of the universe before or that somehow, gravity and quantum mechanics, which we know we don't have a theory for, are playing tricks, uh, with physics in a way that we don't quite have sorted out.

  • So I guess some of the hope is that maybe we can use these observations toe probe the link between gravity and quantum mechanics and hopefully, potentially sort that out.

  • Have you heard about this study that says that Nobel Prize winners live a few years longer than similar scientists who were short listed for the price but don't actually win?

  • Wow, I have not heard that, uh, feeling feeling healthier now.

  • Oh, actually, I'm not feeling all that kind of feeling.

  • Stress.

  • So we'll see.

  • Maybe in the long term, I think it should pay off.

  • Well, I'm hoping it's because of all the good wine and things I get to drink, Of course.

  • All right, well, thank you so much for having a chat with me.

  • That my pleasure.

I'm here at the Mount Strong Low Observatory to talkto one of this year's Nobel Prize winners for physics Professor Brian Schmidt still feels kind of weird.

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