Dark Energy

Adam Riess studies exploding stars known as supernovas, so he's used to making surprising discoveries in space. But yesterday's biggest surprise was a message in his inbox -- telling him he will share a $1 million prize for his work in astronomy. "I woke up in the morning to check my e-mail, and there was a message from a Hong Kong reporter asking if he could interview me about winning the Shaw Prize," said Riess, 36, an astronomy professor at the Johns Hopkins University who shared in the 1998 discovery that the universe is expanding faster as time goes on. A fax later in the day confirmed he had been awarded the Shaw Prize, an international award given each year to scientists who make groundbreaking discoveries in astronomy, life sciences and medicine, and mathematics.

Three Marylanders - an astrophysicist who discovered "dark energy," a critical care physician whose innovative checklists are preventing hospital infections and a novelist writing about love and horror during the Nigerian civil war - are among the 25 people chosen to receive $500,000 "no-strings" grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The so-called "genius grants," which were announced today, can be used however the recipients see fit. All three Marylanders have connections to the Johns Hopkins University, and all said they were honored and understandably delighted.

Fifteen years ago today, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery released into orbit the largest, most powerful observatory ever built for service in the stillness of space, fulfilling a decades-old dream of astronomers everywhere. Since then, from its perch high above the muddling effects of the Earth's atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope has overcome manufacturing flaws and equipment breakdowns, succeeding far beyond its designers' expectations. It has made more than three-quarters of a million photographs.

Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said Wednesday she expects the Senate will pass a budget bill on Tuesday that will include $530 million to continue work toward launch of the Webb Space Telescope in 2018 "and secure America's place in astronomy for the next 50 years. " Speaking at a ribbon-cutting for a new Webb Telescope exhibit at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, the Democratic senator added that she hopes to have the funding bill "on the president's desk to be signed into law by Thanksgiving.

With winter setting in, you might want to look up. Way up. Colder temperatures reduce the amount of water particles in the air, which makes the nighttime sky more clear. Better visibility paired with an early setting sun make the colder months prime for stargazing. Here are a few places that regularly offer up-close looks at distant stars and planets. All of these events are free and weather permitting. Anne Arundel Community College holds Community Observing Night the second Saturday of each month.

Adam Riess, the Nobel Prize-winning astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University, will discuss the expansion of the universe and its mysteries in an event at Bolton Street Synagogue on Sunday. Riess will present and lead a discussion titled "Exploding Stars, an Expanding Universe and Mysterious Dark Energy" at the Roland Park house of worship. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized him for his work in that area in 2011. He shared the $1.49 million prize with fellow American Saul Perlmutter and U.S.-Australian citizen Brian Schmidt "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae," according to the announcement.

Few understand the club that Adam Riess joined Tuesday when he received a 5:30 a.m. phone call from Sweden. But Carol Greider received the same call two years ago, and soon she'll sit with her Johns Hopkins University colleague and tell him what it's like to become a Nobel laureate. "It's going to be a complete whirlwind at first," the molecular biologist said after a news conference for Riess. "First it's the press, but then it's the academic community. I was getting 200 to 300 emails a day after I won. " A Nobel victory creates many ripples.

WASHINGTON -- An international team of astronomers has captured what are described as the first detailed pictures of our universe in its infancy -- just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, before the formation of the first stars and galaxies. The cosmic baby photos look something like slices of a blurry cheese pizza. But they are delighting scientists because they appear to support promising theories about the early physics of the universe and the mechanisms that led to the birth of stars and galaxies like our own. The images -- snapped by a telescope hung beneath a balloon over Antarctica -- also appear to resolve a fundamental question raised by Albert Einstein about whether space is "curved" or "flat."

On the fourth floor of the Hubble space telescope offices in Baltimore, one finds at the helm of the science division an unrepentant romantic padding around the hallways in tennis shoes. He hangs prints of pre-Raphaelite artwork on his walls, and on his bookshelves, among gray tomes about biochemical reagents, cataclysmic variables and radioactive beta decay, he stations a proud little doll with a shock of electric blond hair -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince. One cannot know Mario Livio without learning something about the Little Prince.

Space scientists are peering into a future without the Hubble telescope, and they don't like what they see. If NASA lets the renowned observatory die in orbit, they say, it would prematurely slam the shutters on a unique and vital window on the heavens that might not open again for decades. Other instruments - the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, powerful mountaintop observatories like the mighty Keck II in Hawaii and others less well-known - will continue to make important discoveries.