Taking the Prize

Three physicists who discovered a way to watch the universe through gravity have earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics.

Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne developed a way to detect gravitational waves as they travel through space, much the same way that light does. Albert Einstein predicted gravity waves but since gravity is so much weaker than any of the other four basic forces of the universe, its waves are much smaller and harder to detect. Even the super-sensitive LIGO detector developed by Weiss, Barish and Thorne only sensed waves created by the collision of two black holes -- one with three dozen times the mass of the sun and the other with almost thirty solar masses.

The rules for the physics prize specify that the achievement has been "tested by time," to help reduce the chance that the prize is awarded for a discovery that later proves to be something different. This can mean that there's as much as a 20-year lag between a discovery and an award. But the implications of being able to detect and measure gravity waves are huge enough to warrant the award less than two years after the first confirmed detection was announced.

Were he still around, Albert Einstein would no doubt congratulate the LIGO teams on their achievement. And then stage-whisper to someone standing nearby, "I knew that already."