STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three physicists whose research on entangled particles plays a key role in attempts to develop super-fast quantum computers could be in the running for the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday.
Although the award committee doesn't give any clues about candidates for the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award, Alain Aspect of France, John Clauser of the United States and Anton Zeilinger of Austria are the hottest names in the speculation this year.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Perlmutter would receive half of the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award, with Riess and Schmidt, a U.S.-born Australian, splitting the other half.
Perlmutter, 52, heads the Supernova Cosmology Project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryand 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, 41, is an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
Riess said his "jaw dropped" when he received an early-morning call at his home in Baltimore from a bunch of Swedish men and realized "it wasn't Ikea," the Swedish furniture retailer. "I'm dazed," he told AP.