Stockholm, Oct 4: Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for a study of exploding stars that discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Saul Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae.”
Their discoveries “have helped to unveil a universe that to a large extent is unknown to science,” the citation said.
Perlmutter, 52, heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
Schmidt, 44, is the head of the High-z Supernova Search Team at the Australian National University in Weston Creek, Australia.
Riess, 42, is an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. AP
