Publication Date:
2016-09-30
Description:
Next week, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced, and many scientists expect it to honor the detection of ripples in space called gravitational waves, reported in February by scientists working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). If other prizes are a guide, the Nobel will go to the troika of physicists who 32 years ago conceived of LIGO: Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Ronald Drever and Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. But some influential physicists, including previous Nobel laureates, say the prize, which can be split three ways at most, should include somebody else: Barry Barish, a particle physicist at Caltech. Barish didn't invent LIGO, but he made it happen. The hardware at LIGO's two observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana; the structure of the collaboration; even the big-science character of gravitational wave research—all were molded by Barish, who is now 80. Without Barish, some physicists say, there would have been no discovery. Author: Adrian Cho
Keywords:
Physics
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Geosciences
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Computer Science
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Medicine
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Natural Sciences in General
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Physics
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