Gravitational waves that is!
It has been announced that Rainer Weiss (MIT), Barry Barish (Caltech) and Kip Thorne (Caltech) have won the 2017 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015.
Here are links to a one minute video from Newsy and a few articles from The New York Times that celebrate the honor.
US physicists Win Nobel Prize (Newsy, YouTube)
2017 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to LIGO Black Hole Researchers (Dennis Overbye, New York Times)
Learning from Gravitational Waves (David Kaiser, New York Times)
Needless to say, the gentleman’s respective institutions are proud of their faculty’s achievements, and they’ve each published press releases celebrating the win as well.
MIT physicist Rainer Weiss shares Nobel Prize in physics (Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office)
Caltech Scientists Awarded 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics (Caltech)
MIT also published a short video of Rainer Weiss describing his reaction to finding out that LIGO had successfully discovered gravitational waves.
Rainer Weiss wins Nobel Prize in Physics (MIT, YouTube)
If you’re not exactly well versed about gravitational waves, here’s a neat little video that explains the concept with stick figures.
Minute Physics (YouTube Channel)
Minute Physics (Facebook)
If you would like a more in-depth explanation of the science that earned the Nobel Prize, here’s a video of Walter Issacson interviewing Kip Thorne that covers the fascinating story of how LIGO helped prove something predicted by Einstein a century ago.
Kent Presents (YouTube Channel)
Of course, Kip Thorne isn’t new to the public eye. If he looks a bit familiar to you, it could be because you saw him on TV back in 2014 during numerous interviews where he explained the awesome contributions that he made to the movie Interstellar. Here’s a link to a short clip from the Interstellar Featurette that explains how he helped make the movie spectacular to watch and contributed to a better understanding of physics too!
Interstellar Featurette – Building A Black Hole (Rotten Tomatoes, YouTube)
Cool stuff!
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