STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize for physics honors researchers for discoveries in phenomena as enormous as The Big Bang and as tiny as single particles of light.

This year's award will be announced Tuesday.

The 9-million-kronor ($1.01 million) prize, which can be shared by as many as three people, is decided by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Last year's physics prize went to three Americans who used abstruse theory and ingenious equipment design to detect the faint ripples in the universe called gravitational waves.

On Monday, American James Allison and Japan's Tasuku Honjo won the Nobel medicine prize for groundbreaking work in fighting cancer with the body's own immune system.

The Nobel chemistry prize comes Wednesday, followed by the peace prize on Friday. The economics prize, which is not technically a Nobel, will be announced Oct. 8.