2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Black Hole Researchers
“About a hundred years ago, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, but until now, they were undetectable.” On Tuesday, the third of October, Rainer Weiss (professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Kip Thorne and Barry Barish (both professors of California Institute of Technology) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for what the Royal Swedish Academy called “a discovery that shook the world. These three men were the architects of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) centers. A LIGO center looks like a giant “L”; it reflects gravitational waves in a way which a computer can analyze it. When the waves are moving normally they cancel each other out but when they are affected by something else they make a rhythmic beeping. Over a billion light years away two massive black holes collided releasing the energy equivalent to a billion trillion suns in a fraction of a second….
