Trio bag Nobel for work on gravitational waves
Stockholm, Oct. 3: US astrophysicists Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss were awarded the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for the discovery of gravitational waves, offering a sneak peak at the universe’s very beginnings.
Predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves are “ripples” in space-time — the theoretical fabric of the cosmos.
They are the aftermath of violent galactic events, such as colliding black holes or imploding massive stars, and can reveal events that took place billions of years ago.
The first detection of gravitational waves happened in September 2015 at the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), where the three Nobel laureates worked.
“Their discovery shook the world,” said Goran K. Hansson, the head of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences which selects the Nobel laureates.
Announced in February 2016 to great excitement in the scientific community, the discovery was hailed as the historic culmination of decades of research. It has clinched numerous astrophysics prizes. The 2015 observation was of two black holes smashing into each other some 1.3 billion lightyears away. “Although the signal was extremely weak when it reached Earth, it is already promising a revolution in astrophysics,” the academy said.
“Gravitational waves are an entirely new way of following the most violent events in space and testing the limits of our knowledge,” it said.