© Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: A. Mahmoud
MIT Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, who shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics with two colleagues for their “decisive contributions to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detector and the observation of gravitational waves,” died on August 25 at 92.
In the early 1970s, Weiss developed the idea to use sensitive antennae to measure gravitational waves — ripples in space-time that Albert Einstein predicted in his 1915 general theory of relativity — and later became a founder of the LIGO project, which operates facilities at MIT and Caltech.
A decade ago, in September 2015, LIGO made the first direct measurement of gravitational waves, which came from the merger of two black holes. This discovery kicked off a new era of astronomy.
Below are some articles in the DSpace@MIT repository by Weiss and others that describe work done at MIT in this field:
- This April 1972 report by Weiss is of particular interest: Starting on page 54, he writes in great detail about the sensitivity and anticipated noise that can be expected in a kilometer-scale interferometer to measure gravitational waves. This report presciently describes almost all of the major challenges that must be overcome in order for such a detector to work and lays the foundations for the next four decades of experimental research in this field.
- This February 11, 2016, paper describes the discovery of gravitational waves.
- Weiss’ 2017 Nobel lecture.
After the 2016 discovery paper, Weiss was a coauthor on roughly 100 papers describing ongoing measurements with LIGO and sister instruments Virgo and KAGRA. An example of how he remained on the forefront of the field’s evolution is this October 2021 technical report on Cosmic Explorer, a next-generation instrument that researchers hope will succeed LIGO.
Weiss’ personal papers are in the MIT Libraries Distinctive Collections.