Australian National University astronomer Brian Schmidt has been named a joint winner of the 2011 Nobel physics prize for his research into supernovae.
The Nobel Committee for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the prize was awarded ''for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae''.
''They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate," the committee said.
"The discovery came as a complete surprise, even to the laureates themselves."
Professor Schmidt said at first, the discovery seemed too crazy to be true.
"We ended up telling the world we have this crazy result, the universe is speeding up," he said.
Professor Schmidt, 44, said he may not have become a Nobel winner if he had not met his Australian wife at Harvard and come to live in the country 17 years ago.
The prize will be presented at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
