Three physics laureates found universe’s ripples
U.S.-based scientists win for detecting gravitationalwaves.
Three U.S.STOCKHOLM — based scientists won the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for detecting faint ripples flying through the universe the gravitational
— waves predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein that provide a new understanding of the universe.
Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technologywon the 2017 prize for a combination of highly advanced theoryandingeniousequipment design, Sweden’sRoyalAcademy of Sciences announced.
The scientistswere key to the first observation of gravitational waves in September 2015. When the discovery was announced several months later, itwas a sensation not only among scientists but the general public.
“It’s a win for the human race as awhole. These gravitationalwaves will be powerfulways for the human race toexplore the universe,” said Thorne, speaking by phone with The Associated Press from California.
“I view thismore as a thing that recognizes thework of a thousandpeople,” Weiss told reporters at the announcement news conference.
The prize is “a win for Einstein, and a very big one,” Barish told the AP.
The German-born Weiss was awarded half of the $1.1 million prize amount and Thorne and Barish will split the other half.
Gravitational waves are extremely faint ripples in the fabric of space and time, generated by some of the most violent events in the universe. Thewaves detectedby the laureates came fromthe collision of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. A light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.
Ariel Goobar of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the winners’work meant “we can study processes which were completely impossible, out of reach to us in the past.”
“The best comparison is when Galileo discovered the telescope, which allowed us to see that Jupiter had moons. And all of a sudden, we discovered that the universewasmuch vaster than we used to think about,” Goobar said.
With the technology that the three developed “we may even see entirely new objects thatwe haven’t even imagined yet,” said Patrick Sutton, an astronomer at Cardiff University inWales.
Thewaveswere predicted by Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity. General relativity says that gravity is caused by heavy objects bending space-time, which itself is the four-dimensional way that astronomers see the universe.
Wei s s in the 1970s designed a laser-baseddevice that would detect gravitational waves. He, Thorne and Barish “ensured that four decades of effort led to gravitational waves finally being observed,” the Nobel announcement said. The laser device, called an interferometer, must be both exquisitely precise and extremely stable.
The first detection of gravitywaves involved two of the devices about 1,900 miles apart— in anford, Wash., and Livingston, La. Thewave first passed the Livingston facility and 7 milliseconds later at Hanford, consistent with the speed of light.
Professor AlbertoVecchio, from the University of Birmingham’s Institute ofGravitational Wave Astronomy, said this discovery will produce results for decades to come.
“The best part is that this is just the beginning of a new roller-coaster exploration of the universe,” Vecchio said.