US trio wins Nobel Physics Prize for gravitational waves discovery
Tuesday October 03 2017
A portrait of US laureates (L-R) Rainer Weiss, Barry C Barish and Kip S Thorne on a display during the announcement of the 2017 Nobel Prize winners in Physics on October 3, 2017, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. PHOTO | AFP
US astrophysicists Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for their discovery of gravitational waves, the Nobel jury said.
Predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity but only first detected in 2015, gravitational waves are 'ripples’ in the fabric of space-time caused by violent processes in the Universe, such as colliding black holes or the collapse of stellar cores.
“Their discovery shook the world,” said Goran K Hansson, the head of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.