Nobel Prize in physics goes to three for discovering gravity waves

October 3, 2017 • 12:30 pm

As several readers guessed two days ago, this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to Rainer Weiss of MIT, and to Kip Thorne and Barry Barish of CalTech, for detecting gravity waves. (Weiss gets half the dosh, the other two a quarter each.) That discovery happened only a year and a half ago, and that makes this award unusually soon. But the achievement was remarkable (the instrumentation alone defies belief) and the result is solid. These waves were predicted long ago by Einstein, but until now nobody had a way of finding them, as their effect is tiny. The New York Times has a good article on the achievement, and the Karolinska Institute’s citation is here.

And here’s the three winners, all over 80 or pushing that age. Congrats!

(from the NYT): From left: Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, the architects and leaders of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. Credit Molly Riley/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tomorrow is the Chemistry prize, Thursday the Literature prize (always a hard one to guess), Friday’s the Peace prize, and Monday is the bogus Economics prize. Remember, there is a contest about this, and if you guessed one of these guys, or any of the biology winners (only one person needed to be named), you’re still in. If you haven’t guessed yet, you can do any combination of chemistry, literature, peace, and economics, guessing at least one person per subject (two subjects required). Guesses have to be made before the relevant prize is announced. The prize is two books.

38 thoughts on “Nobel Prize in physics goes to three for discovering gravity waves”

  1. The citation is not from Karolinska institutet. They only hand out the Medicine prize, the physics and chimstry prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

  2. There are also the Ignoble prizes that were awarded in September. The one in physics is intriguing: Marc-Antoine Fardin, for using fluid dynamics to probe the question “Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?”

    1. I think CRISPR will be given in Medicine and Physiology, not chemistry, and my suspicion is that Sweden is waiting to see how the patent wars shake out before deciding who, if anyone, gets the prize for that.

      But of course I may be wrong.

      1. And I think you are right. Since the award has not yet been announced, and with your permission, I’d like to change my guess to John Bercaw (Caltech) for his contributions to C-H functionalisation.

        (I want that autographed book!)

  4. Ah, Kip Thorne – I will be forever indebted to him for a book of his I read when I was first getting into science, and physics in particular. It was about special relativity, and it explained it in a fairly idiosyncratic way.
    If it wasn’t for this book of his, which was completely incomprehensible and made me feel like a chimp trying to work a coke machine, I wouldn’t have been spurred on and gone out and bought books on the same subject by Brian Greene and Sean Carroll, books which I managed to semi-understand.

    I’m not sure I approve of his beard though – he looks like the kind of person who turns out to run a church for humanists.

    1. Michael Caine’s character in Interstellar is partly modelled on Thorne. The writing on the blackboard is his.

      He should probably die the beard though. It looks like he spilled his Guinness.

      1. Michael Caine as one of the world’s pre-eminent theoretical physicists. Brave casting choice.

        “The second law of fermodynamics determines the arrow of time you fackin’ great tart” – that was my favourite line of his from the movie.

    2. Perhaps one might ought to directly contact him and discuss the aesthetics of beards. Or maybe he will come across this thread and respond.

  5. Yep, this was one of the easier years to predict the Physics Nobel.

    Why is the Econ prize “bogus”? Just that it’s squishy as “science”? Not contesting, I just don’t know. (I only followed a few previous ones, e.g., Krugman’s, which seemed interesting.)

    1. The Economics prize wasn’t part of Nobel’s original will. It was added later, and is not actually a “Nobel Prize”, it’s a prize “in honour of Nobel”.

  6. Has the regressive left started complaining that the prize was once again awarded to a bunch of old white men?

    Recommended: Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, by Janna Levin.

  8. The speed of the prize doesn’t surprise me. The discovery was front page news. Only the detection of the Higgs got as much press. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

  9. I believe it’s unfair for death to disqualify one from the prize.

    I also think the categories, which reflect Alfred’s outdated Weltanschauung, are in need of revision:

    Chemistry is physics, so just have physics.

    Medicine is biology, so just have biology.

    An extra science category is open to suggestions. Is there anything worthy of a category other than physics and biology? Physicists might argue that biology is physics.

    Mathematics is taken with the Fields Medal. Don’t go there.

    Literature, peace, and to an extent economics are fraught with ideology and should be kept separate.

    1. Literature, Peace, and Economics are purely products of biology too, so should all be physics. Just have one prize, eh?

    2. I used to daydream about getting a Nobel when I was a kid. I’d still very much like one, so I think it’s unfair for ignorance and lack of any talent to disqualify one for the prize. After all, they’ve invented new categories since its inception – who’s to say they can’t invent a new category for people like me, people who aren’t necessarily talented in any way, but who really, really, really want a Nobel?
      Frankly, the whole Nobel thing almost seems a bit elitist.

      1. Chemistry is a subset of physics, as is everything else, according to the point of view that the universe is deterministic because physics.

  10. I believe it’s gravitational waves instead of gravity waves. Just noticed. I was thinking of Drever also.

    2. Yep, gravitational waves instead of gravity waves. Gravity waves include water waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime.

      When I first searched for gravitational waves, I googled gravity waves and the results were extremely disappointing.

  11. Maybe the unusual promptness with which the Prize was awarded, was prompted by the desire that the awardees should still be alive to receive it. 😉

    cr

    1. Yes I was thinking the same thing. With all three over 80, the thought might have been ‘award them now or risk not awarding them at all.’

      1. While I suppose highly unlikely, I wonder what if any major/significant accomplishments have missed being recognized with a Nobel prize due to the deaths of scientists/researchers. Would the Nobel deciders simply go down the research group “chain-of-command” until they found a yet-alive (minor?) group member/(former)grad student?

  12. From the New York Times article:

    “The equations (of relativity) predicted, somewhat to (Einstein’s) displeasure, that the universe was expanding from what we now call the Big Bang.”

    I don’t think that’s true. I believe relativity predicted that the universe is either expanding or contracting. It was Edwin Hubble who discovered that it’s expanding.

    1. expanding… at a decreasing rate.

      Have they worked out yet whether it will keep expanding forever or slow down and reverse in the Big Crunch?

      (Probably decades ago, I’m way out of date with this stuff)

      cr

  15. Gravity waves open up a HUGE door for physicists to enter. This was a monumental discovery in terms of space science/exploration. Congrats to these 3 brains!!

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