(CNN) Three British physicists working at US universities have won the Nobel Prize in Physics for revealing the secrets of exotic matter.
The 8 million Swedish Krona prize (more than US $931,000) was divided between the three laureates according to their contributions -- one half awarded to David Thouless of the University of Washington, and the other half jointly to Duncan Haldane of Princeton University and Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University.
"This year's laureates opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states," said the Nobel Foundation in a statement Tuesday.
"They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual phases, or states, of matter, such as superconductors, superfluids or thin magnetic films"
What was their discovery?
In the early 1970s, Kosterlitz and Thouless overturned the then-current theory that superconductivity could not occur in extremely thin layers.
"They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism -- phase transition -- that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures," explained the Foundation.
Around a decade later, Haldane also studied matter that forms threads so thin they can be considered one-dimensional.
A member of the Nobel committee explained the process in a video, using a cinnamon bun, a bagel and a pretzel:
Why is it important?
The physicists' pioneering research could be used in the next generation of electronics and superconductors -- or even quantum computers, as Nobel Committee member Thors Hans Hansson explained.
"People are working very hard in the labs to get new materials which have interesting properties of conducting electricity," he said.
"And the dream is that this can be used for carrying information."
Remember when the prize went to...
The Higgs boson, or "God particle," garnered Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom the Nobel in Physics in 2013.
Secrets of the 'God particle'
Three years ago, scientists in Geneva, Switzerland, announced they had proved the existence of the so-called "God particle" known as Higgs boson -- a never-before-seen subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe. This year, researchers from two different teams combined their measurements of the particle, providing an unprecedented picture of Higgs boson's production, decay and interaction with other particles. Click through the gallery for more.
This graphic shows traces of the collision of particles from an experiment at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) -- a large particle detector in Geneva. The Standard Model of particle physics lays out the basics of how elementary particles and forces interact in the universe. But the theory crucially fails to explain how particles actually get their mass. Particles, or bits of matter, range in size and can be larger or smaller than atoms. Electrons, protons and neutrons, for instance, are the subatomic particles that make up an atom. Scientists believe that the Higgs boson is the particle that gives all matter its mass.
An image of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. "The Higgs boson is the last missing piece of our current understanding of the most fundamental nature of the universe," Martin Archer, a physicist at Imperial College in London, told CNN. "Only now with the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] are we able to really tick that box off and say 'This is how the universe works, or at least we think it does'."
Higgs boson research takes place at the Large Hadron Collider -- a circular tunnel located 100 meters (328 feet) underground. It uses a particle accelerator to collide protons at extreme speeds. By combining their data, researchers found that there are different ways to produce a Higgs boson, and different ways for a Higgs boson to decay to other particles.
British physicist Peter Higgs, right, speaks with Belgian physicist Francois Englert at a press conference at Geneva's CERN facility in 2012. Higgs and Englert shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for describing an explanation for why particles have mass. They independently published papers on this topic in 1964.
CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation exhibition center and surface buildings, which provide access to the Large Hadron Collider, can be seen near Geneva, Switzerland. CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said, "There is much benefit in combining the results of large experiments to reach the high precision needed for the next breakthrough in our field. By doing so, we achieve what for a single experiment would have meant running for at least 2 more years."
Teams from ATLAS and CMS Collaborations combined their research to obtain their results. "Combining results from two large experiments was a real challenge as such analysis involves over 4,200 parameters that represent systematic uncertainties," said CMS Spokesperson Tiziano Camporesi. "With such a result and the flow of new data at the new energy level at the LHC, we are in a good position to look at the Higgs boson from every possible angle."
The particle accelerator magnets of the LHC are shown at the underground test facility at CERN near Geneva. Many scientists dislike the term "God particle," even though it's become popular in the media. The nickname came from the title of a book by Leon Lederman, who reportedly wanted to call it the "Goddamn Particle" since it was so hard to find.
In the preface to a 2014 book, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking wrote he was worried that Higgs boson might turn unstable and lead to the end of everything. The "universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light," Hawking wrote. "This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming." Not to worry too much. Hawking added that such a scenario would require a "particle accelerator that ... would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate."
Five decades ago, Englert and Higgs had the foresight to predict the elusive particle existed -- long before scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced they had discovered it in 2012.
The following year, the octogenarian pair shared the Nobel in recognition of their early theoretical brilliance which helped uncover the particle, thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe.
Read more: What is the Higgs boson and why is it important?
Physics winners are the youngest
With an average age of 55, Nobel physics laureates are the youngest of all laureates.
Australian-born British physicist William Lawrence Bragg was just 25 years old when he won the prize, along with his father William Henry Bragg, for their work on x-ray crystallography in 1915.
Bragg remained the youngest laureate for almost a century, until Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
However, this year the Physics winners are at the upper end of the age bracket -- Thouless is 82, Kosterlitz is 74, and Haldane is 65.
Did you know...?
Of the 198 people who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, just two have been women.
They include Polish-born French physicist Marie Curie, who took the prize in 1903 for her pioneering work in radioactivity. Curie also won the Nobel in Chemistry in 1911.
And German-born American Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who won in 1963 for her discoveries in nuclear shell structure.