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The 2017 Nobel Physics Prize
October 4 , 2017
2608 days
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- The 2017 Nobel Physics Prize has been awarded to awarded “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves” to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.
- 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.
- Triggered when super-dense black holes merge, the waves were detected using laser beams at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). “The signal was extremely weak when it reached the Earth.
- The waves detected by the laureates came from the collision of two black holes some 1.3 billion light years away. A light year is about 9.5 trillion km.
- The waves came from a collision between two black holes.
- Einstein was convinced that gravitational waves could never be measured. The laureates used laser devices “to measure a change thousands of times smaller than an atomic nucleus,”
- Weiss designed a laser-based device that would overcome background noise that would disturb measurements of gravitational waves
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