Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - 9:23am
NBC News — Three U.S. born scientists have won the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics. Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess were awarded the prize for the stunning discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up, meaning it may one day turn to ice.
Scientists have known since the 1920s that the universe is expanding, but the scientists' discovery that this process is accelerating, and not slowing as many thought, rocked the research community. The three scientists join another American, Bruce Beutler, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on monday.