'Cosmic mirages' confirm accelerated cosmic expansion
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - 07:03
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) -- An international team of researchers led by Masamune Oguri at Kavli IPMU and Naohisa Inada at Nara National College of Technology conduced an unprecedented survey of gravitationally lensed quasars, and used it to measure the expansion history of the universe. The result provides strong evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. There were several observations that suggested the accelerated cosmic expansion, including distant supernovae for which the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded. The team's result confirms the accelerated cosmic expansion using a completely different approach, which strengthens the case for dark energy. This result will be published in The Astronomical Journal.