The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony and Banquet takes place today and will be broadcast live online.

The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony and Banquet takes place today (10 December 2009) in Stockholm and will be broadcast live online on the NobelPrize.org website.

This year’s Nobel Week started on Monday, with the Swedish capital welcoming the 13 Nobel Laureates from across the world. The programme of scientific and cultural events culminates in today’s proceedings at the Stockholm Concert Hall and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.

Both the Nobel Lectures and today’s ceremonies – on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death – will be available on the website – live and accessible after the event as video-on-demand – as a result of a partnership with Google Inc.’s YouTube.

This is the first time that such a prestigious and normally guarded event has been made so accessible to the masses, alongside its normal television broadcast. The ceremonies in Oslo and Stockholm will be broadcasted live on Nobelprize.org starting at 1.00pm and 4.30pm, respectively, this afternoon.

Other new web features include “Ask a Laureate,” which lets YouTube users hear 2006 physics laureate John Mather answer questions about subjects like the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.

The 2009 Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel were announced in October, with the award of the Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama causing much attention, and some controversy given that he had only been in the role such a short time.

The Nobel Prize awarding institutions are the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Academy – as well as the Nobel Foundation, which was set up in 1900 to manage the money that finances the prizes.

At the ceremony in Stockholm today, the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and the Prize in Economic Sciences will be awarded to the Nobel Laureates. They will receive the Nobel Prize Medal, Nobel Prize Diploma and document confirming the Nobel Prize amount from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

In Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama will receive his Nobel Peace Prize from the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the presence of King Harald V of Norway.

For more information, and to watch the ceremonies, visit: www.nobelprize.org