I can be terse

There is a deeper nothing in which even the laws of physics are absent. Where do the laws come from? Are they born with the universe, or is the universe born in accordance with them? Here Dr. Krauss, unhappily in my view, resorts to the newest and most controversial toy in the cosmologist’s toolbox: the multiverse, a nearly infinite assemblage of universes, each with its own randomly determined rules, particles and forces, that represent solutions to the basic equations of string theory — the alleged theory of everything, or perhaps, as wags say, anything.

This is deeply unsatisfying, for reasons I'll get to in a minute. Dr. Krauss is following in the tradition of Pierre-Simon Laplace:

Laplace went in state to Napoleon to present a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.") Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses. ("Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.")

The deeply unsatisfying part is hinted at in the NYT article: "But even the multiverse is not totally lawless, as Dr. Krauss acknowledged. We are not quite there yet. At the very least, there would still be the string equations and those quantum principles that undergird them."

Ah yes, because if we have nothing at all, we have nothing at all. Nothing that can fluctuate, nothing that describes strings, not even the abstract entities of mathematics, such as randomness. We just have... nothing. No existence of any kind, abstract or concrete. How can existence emerge from nonexistence? This puzzle is in fact a riddle wrapped in an mystery inside an enigma. Lengthening the chain from the Multiverse of today to Nothing At All doesn't remove the paradox.

Today, Juhan Kim at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul, and a few pals, show just how far this technique has come. These guys have carried out the largest simulation of the universe ever undertaken, consisting of 374 billion particles in a box some 10 gigaparsecs across. That's roughly equivalent to about two thirds the size of the observable universe.

This took some 20 days of computing time on the Tachyonii supercomputer in Korea, the 26th fastest in the world in the last set of rankings.

They are looking for the signature of Cold Dark Matter in the evolution of the Universe.

For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma - perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.

This year's Nobel in Physics goes to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Riess for their discovery that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, not decelerating as expected. This result came from an examination of distant supernova, and has been confirmed by an examination of the cosmic microwave background and the dynamics of galaxy clusters.

Dr. Perlmutter led a team studying distant type Ia supernova occurring in binary star systems in which a white dwarf accretes matter from the evolving companion. As the white dwarf's mass grows, it becomes unstable, and eventually destroys itself in a huge blaze of energy which can be seen across the Universe. These explosions are amazingly uniform and consistent in energy, which enable astronomers to use them as "standard candles", or objects of known absolute brightness. By measuring the observed peak brightness, the distance to the supernova can be computed.

Drs. Schmidt and Riess started a second search for high-z, or distant, supernova a few years later. Both teams came to similar but astonishing conclusions; the Universe's expansion is not decelerating, but rather is speeding up over time.