In brief

The discovery that a mysterious dark energy is driving an ever-faster expansion of the universe captured the $1 million Shaw Prize in astronomy for three researchers. Saul Perlmutter, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Adam G. Riess, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, also in Baltimore; and Brian P. Schmidt, Australian Research Council Federation Fellow of Mt. Stromlo Observatory at the Australian National University in Canberra, were awarded the prize “for discovering that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, implying in the simplest interpretation that the energy density of space is non-vanishing even in the absence of any matter and radiation.” The prize will be awarded during a September ceremony in Hong Kong. Created in 2002, the Shaw Prize is administered by the Shaw Prize Foundation in Hong Kong.