Researchers who helped detect gravitational waves for the first time, confirming part of Albert Einstein’s theory in a landmark moment in scientific history, will share a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize, according to the prize’s selection committee.
- The Breakthrough Prizes for scientific achievements were created by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner along with several technology pioneers, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
- In February, a team from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced a pair of giant laser detectors had measured the tiny ripples in space and time first theorized by Einstein a century ago, capping a decades-long quest.
- LIGO’s three founders – Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever, who dedicated much of their careers to gravitational wave detection – will share $1 million. More than 1,000 contributors to the project will also split $2 million equally.
About Gravitational waves :
- Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate as waves, generated in certain gravitational interactions and travelling outward from their source.
- Predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein on the basis of his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves transport energy as gravitational radiation, a form of radiant energy similar to electromagnetic radiation.
- Gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, since Newtonian theory postulates that physical interactions propagate at infinite speed.
No comments:
Post a Comment