Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt talks at Tsinghua
In the morning of October 13, 2017, the Australian National University Vice-Chancellor and Nobel laureate in Physics (2011), Prof. Brian Schmidt visited Tsinghua University, President Yong Qiu met with Prof. Schmidt in the main building. After the meeting, Professor Schmidt delivered a lecture on "the State of the Universe", hosted by Professor Shude Mao, Director of Tsinghua center for Astrophysics. In his talk, Professor Schmidt told the audience how we learned the evolution of the universe through the efforts of and struggles generations of astronomers.
Professor Schmidt told the story how he and his colleagues used the world's largest 10 meter Keck telescope, to observe distant type Ia supernovae which led to the discovery of cosmic acceleration. The startling discovery led to our deeper understanding of the content of the universe including dark matter and dark energy and its ultimate fate. Because of this discovery, Professor Schmidt won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2011.
In the following Q&A, the students asked questions about dark matter, space expansion, black holes cosmology and the importance of science popularization; Professor Schmidt answered all these questions with insight and humor.