What They're Saying About Adam Riess

A day later, accolades are still pouring in for Adam Riess, the Stoneleigh resident and Johns Hopkins astrophysicist whose work investigating dark energy and the expansion of the universe on Tuesday.

U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski congratulated Riess, saying in a press release that the prize "recognizes this discovery and highlights how important it is for America to invest in our scientific infrastructure—our talent and the equipment that helps them unlock scientific know-how.

"We still don't understand dark energy," she continued. "I can't wait to see what Dr. Riess and his colleagues will help the world uncover when they can push these discoveries further with the James Webb Space Telescope."     

For their part, Riess and Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, praised Mikulski Tuesday for supporting federal funding for the Webb telescope and research like theirs.

In an editorial, The Baltimore Sun called the discovery by Riess and his colleagues "a world-changing result comparable to Galileo's discovery."

The Atlantic wrote about the game-changing nature of the discovery: "The whole dark-energy concept is so strange, so utterly lacking antecedent either in theory or in common-sense experience, it was as if someone walked up and said, 'Hey, did you hear Britney Spears just found the cure for cancer?'"

Time magazine wrote about the accident that led to the Nobel-winning find, what is now recognized as one of the great discoveries of modern astronomy.