Nobel Prize In Physics Awarded To LIGO Scientists For Discovery Of Gravitational Waves

Published October 3, 2017 at 11:12 AM CDT

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Nobel Committee for Physics members (bottom, left to right) chairman, professor Nils Martensson, Goran K. Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Olga Botner, professor of experimental elementary particle physics, announce the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics on Oct. 3, 2017, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. 2017 laureates for the Nobel Prize in Physics (on the display, left to right) are Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded Tuesday to Rainer Weiss, from MIT, and Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, from Cal Tech, three physicists who are members of the LIGO collaboration that detected gravitational waves created by the collision of a pair of black holes a billion light-years away. Albert Einstein predicted that gravitational waves existed a century ago, but they weren’t detected until 2015.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with Gabriela González, professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University and part of the LIGO collaboration, about the discovery that was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Nobel Prize In Physics Awarded To LIGO Scientists For Discovery Of Gravitational Waves

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