Einstein's waves win Nobel Prize in physics

[Still Waters]

The 2017 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three US scientists for the detection of gravitational waves.

Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Kip Thorne will share the nine million kronor (£831,000) prize.

The ripples were predicted by Albert Einstein and are a fundamental consequence of his General Theory of Relativity.

The winners are members of the Ligo-Virgo observatories, which were responsible for the breakthrough.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41476648

[EBE Hybrid]

Remarkable discovery, the three are very deserving winners of the Nobel prize

[TaintlessMetals]

They should be proud, this will lay the stones for humanities path to the rest of the universe. So much progress will be made from what we learn, very deserving of this accolade.

[Derek Willis]

It's interesting how science evolves. The virtually unknown British genius Oliver Heaviside was first to mention the possibility of gravity waves in 1893. Heaviside had previously reduced Maxwell's original unmanageable twenty electromagnetic equations to the four we now use. Then through analogy with the waves produced by an excited electromagnetic field, he suggested a similar situation would occur with a gravitational field. Then in 1905 the French mathematician Henri Poincare proposed gravity waves would be a requirement of the Lorenz transformations (which themselves had their origins in work done by Heaviside).

Of course, Einstein brought everything together and came up with the equations for gravity waves. But it is a pity that most of the giants on whose shoulders people like Einstein stood became little more than footnotes in history. I am particularly fond of Oliver Heaviside because he was entirely self-taught, and did much of his science whilst working in a telegraph office in my home town.

Kip Thorne et al thoroughly deserve the Nobel prize. I have a copy of Scientific American dating to 1978 in which Thorne talks about his search for gravity waves. Just less than forty years later they were discovered, and now he and the other researchers have been rewarded.

[qxcontinuum]

this proof of concept discovery was somewhat expected since i knew about this project. Science does make progress but lets hope it won't die but carried forward. There's a lot of benefits tided into it; such as exploring the possibility to transmit information or even more travel by it... well time travel etc

[Sir Smoke aLot]

It's so fascinating to see just on what level of sensitivity did LIGO sensors had to have to detect gravitational waves and do measurements. In talk about LIGO, moderated by Brian Greene LINK scientists mention basis of scepticism over the project when they were making proposal for LIGO in 1989. At 1:13:00 in video they talk about it. Very interesting piece of this large project.

[Ell]

8 hours ago, Derek Willis said:

less than forty years later they were discovered

What was discovered was a vibration. That is a fact.

It has been asserted that the vibration was caused by a gravitational wave. That is not a fact, but an interpretation.

[Derek Willis]

16 minutes ago, Ell said:

What was discovered was a vibration. That is a fact.

It has been asserted that the vibration was caused by a gravitational wave. That is not a fact, but an interpretation.

Perhaps you could suggest - and back up with maths - what else other than a gravitational wave caused the disturbances in the manner predicted by the GR field equations. You can then pass the information on to Kip Thorne. I am sure he would be willing to give his Nobel prize to you.  

[paperdyer]

So now scientist want to study gravitational waves in with the Big Bang Theory (the actually bang, not the TV show that I'd like to blow up!)  Maybe this version of the universe isn't as old as we think maybe it just keeps getting "Banged" over and over again. You know, keep playing with the puzzle pieces until you get something you like.That almost sounded slightly religious.

[qxcontinuum]

14 minutes ago, paperdyer said:

So now scientist want to study gravitational waves in with the Big Bang Theory (the actually bang, not the TV show that I'd like to blow up!)  Maybe this version of the universe isn't as old as we think maybe it just keeps getting "Banged" over and over again. You know, keep playing with the puzzle pieces until you get something you like.That almost sounded slightly religious.

I don't think this universe is older as they initially said. Heck i don't believe in Carbon dating method either! The years they push back evolution is unsettling un-comfortable to my own observations or calculation/estimations of a few phisical and chemical processes i know.  Recently has been discovered that Neptun's rings are relatively newer than history of Dinosaurus on Earth. So we must be ready to embrace every new discovery as crazy it seems to be or as uncomfortable to old fart scientists . What i expect in the next 5 years would be announcement that there was life on Mars and it perished as earlier as 2000 years ago not millions. 

Non the less a very cool finding!