2017 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to LIGO and gravitational wave detectors

Find out the winners of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics

By: News Desk |
October 3, 2017 4:53 pm

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 has been awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”. The award has been divided, where the first half has been awarded to Rainer Weiss and the other half will jointly be shared by Barry and Thorne.

Kip Thorne, 77 was born in the USA and is a professor of the Theoretical Physics at California Institute of Technology. Rainer Weiss, 85 was born in Germany and works as a Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Barry C. Barish, 81 is also from the US and is a professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to 207 Nobel Laureates since 1901. It has been awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, Stockholm, Sweden. Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Max Planck are among some of the most popular Physics Laureates.

JOIN US IN CONGRATULATING RAINER WEISS!
Just awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 together with Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne. pic.twitter.com/Ql30We2Oms

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 3, 2017

“On 14 September 2015, the universe’s gravitational waves were observed for the very first time. The waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago, came from a collision between two black holes. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to arrive at the LIGO detector in the USA,” the press statement read as.

The waves came from a collision between two black holes. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to arrive at the LIGO detector in the USA. pic.twitter.com/kg6vQbIm7t

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 3, 2017

Meanwhile, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling our biological clocks. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 was awarded to David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”.