2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 4 October 2011.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae".

The laureates

Saul Perlmutter was born in 1959 in Champaign-Urbana, the United States, and is affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley and the University of California, Berkeley. Brian P. Schmidt was born in 1967 in Missoula, the United States, and is affiliated with Australian National University, Weston Creek. Adam G. Riess was born in 1969 in Washington, D.C., the United States, and is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore.

Why it matters

By studying exploding stars, two research teams found in 1998 that the expansion of the universe is speeding up, not slowing down. The cause is thought to be a mysterious "dark energy".

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.