TITLE: Closed vs Rational Points on Schemes
QUESTION [20 upvotes]: Background: When Ueno builds the fully faithful functor from Var/k to Sch/k he mentions that the variety $V$ can be identified with the rational points of $t(V)$ over $k$. I know how to prove this on affine everything and will work out the general case at some future time.
The question that this got me thinking about was if $X$ is a $k$-scheme where $k$ is algebraically closed, then are the $k$-rational points of $X$ just the closed points? This is probably extremely well known, but I can't find it explicitly stated nor can I find a counterexample.
For $k$ not algebraically closed, I can come up with examples where this is not true. So in general is there some relation between the closed points and rational points on schemes (everything over $k$)?
This would give a bit more insight into what this functor does. It takes the variety and makes all the points into closed points of a scheme, then adds the generic points necessary to actually make it a legitimate scheme. General tangential thoughts on this are welcome as well.

REPLY [15 votes]: The following result deals with the case of finite type affine schemes over an arbitrary field $k$.
Theorem: Let $A$ be a finitely generated algebra over a field $k$.  Let $\iota: A \rightarrow \overline{A} = A \otimes_k \overline{k}$.
a) For every maximal ideal $\mathfrak{m}$ of $A$, the set $\mathcal{M}(\mathfrak{m})$ of 
maximal ideals $\mathcal{M}$ of $\overline{A}$ lying over $\mathfrak{m}$ is finite and 
nonempty.
b) The natural action of $G = \operatorname{Aut}(\overline{k}/k)$ on $\mathcal{M}(\mathfrak{m})$ is transitive.  Thus $\operatorname{MaxSpec}(A) = G \backslash 
\operatorname{MaxSpec}(\overline{A})$.
c) If $k$ is perfect, the size of the $G$-orbit on $\mathfrak{m} \in \operatorname{MaxSpec}(A)$ is equal to the degree of the field extension of $k$ generated by 
the coordinates in $\overline{k}^n$ of any $\mathcal{M}$ lying over $\mathfrak{m}$.  
In brief, the closed points correspond to the Galois orbits of the geometric points.  
This is Theorem 8 in http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/8320notes3.pdf.
The proof is left as an exercise, with some suggestions.
Exactly where this result came from, I cannot now remember.  The text for the course that these notes accompany was Qing Liu's Algebraic Geometry and Arithmetic Curves (+1!), so it's a good shot that there is at least some cognate result in there.