The 2011 Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to a project that looks at the biggest subject imaginable - the entire universe.
One half of the prize was awarded to to Saul Perlmutter at the Supernova Cosmology Project, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, California. The other half of the prize goes to Brian Schmidt of the High-z Supernova Search Team at the Australian National University and Adam G. Riess at The High-z Supernova Search Team at Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore.
The team made the immensely significant discovery the accelerating expansion of the universe through observation of distant supernovae.
Lars Brink, Professor in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics and member of the Nobel committee for physics said: "It tells us something about the basic laws of nature... it's not that we're gonna use it for new gadgets."
Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, told The Huffington Post: "This award recognises an important and surprising discovery - that the universe is speeding up in its expansion, rather than slowing down, as we would expect to be the case because of the mutual gravitational force of every galaxy."
Rees explained that even empty space contains energy and exerts a kind of 'antigravity' which overwhelms normal gravity on the cosmic scale and causes the universe's expansion to accelerate.
He added: "It will be a long time before theorists understand this force, it is part of the bedrock nature of space and time."