in 1929 edwin hubble published an earth shaking paper in which he set out the idea of the expanding universe. he determined that the speed at which galaxies move away from us is proportional to their distance from us and more distant ones received faster than the closer ones. for the discovery in the 1990 s. that the rate of expansion is accelerating the nobel prize in physics was awarded in 2011. to saul perlmutter brian schmidt and adam are e s. . the idea behind their research is quite simple objects look less bright the further away they are you have your special it's well consider these 2 t.v. lights placed at different distances from me the brightness of the candles remains constant if i measure the brightness of a more distant one it will seem less bright than the narrow one we use this kind of method in astronomy. when we find objects that maintain constant brightness in our case supernovae which are exploded stars but appear less bright then we know that there are further away that lets us measure distances in the universe and work out its rate of expansion. the underlying assumptio