{"id":3268,"date":"2017-10-03T07:08:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T11:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2017-10-03T07:08:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T11:08:04","slug":"spotlight-gravitational-waves-win-the-nobel-prize-in-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/2017\/spotlight-gravitational-waves-win-the-nobel-prize-in-physics\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight: Gravitational waves win the Nobel Prize in physics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3274\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3274\" class=\"wp-image-3274 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/app\/uploads\/sites\/5\/MIT-10-3-2017-Weiss-Nobel-01_0-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"MIT-10-3-2017-Weiss-Nobel-01_0\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3274\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rainer Weiss at home early this morning, after learning that he has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2017\/mit-physicist-rainer-weiss-shares-nobel-prize-physics-1003\">Photo: M. Scott Brauer<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>MIT professor emeritus <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/physics\/people\/faculty\/weiss_rainer.html\">Rainer Weiss<\/a> has won the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/nobel_prizes\/physics\/laureates\/2017\/\">2017 Nobel Prize for physics<\/a>\u00a0along with Caltech colleagues Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, for their &#8220;decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/1721.1\/109512\">the discovery paper<\/a>\u00a0as well as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/libguides.mit.edu\/c.php?g=512578&amp;p=3502238\">open access resources on LIGO &amp; gravitational waves<\/a>:\u00a0an annotated collection of technical reports, peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, and theses, freely available in the <a href=\"https:\/\/dspace.mit.edu\/\">DSpace@MIT<\/a>\u00a0repository, that describe work done at MIT, from the earliest science to post-detection research.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dspace.mit.edu\/search?scope=%2F&amp;query=%28%28identifier%3A1721.1%2F56057%29+OR+%28identifier%3A+1721.1%2F56243%29+OR+%28identifier%3A1721.1%2F56271%29+OR+%28identifier%3A+1721.1%2F56365%29+OR+%28identifier%3A+1721.1%2F56592%29+OR+%28identifier%3A+1721.1%2F56655%29+OR+%28identifier%3A+1721.1%2F56696%29%29&amp;rpp=10&amp;sort_by=2&amp;order=ASC&amp;submit=Go\">These papers<\/a>, all published as Quarterly Reports of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, describe early ideas by Weiss\u00a0to develop sensitive antennae to measure gravitational waves.\u00a0The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/1721.1\/56271\">April 1972 report<\/a>\u00a0is of particular interest:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dspace.mit.edu\/bitstream\/handle\/1721.1\/56271\/RLE_QPR_105_V.pdf?sequence=1#page=38\">Starting on page 54<\/a>, Professor Weiss 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\u00a0lays\u00a0the foundations for the next four decades of experimental research in this field.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MIT professor emeritus <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/physics\/people\/faculty\/weiss_rainer.html\">Rainer Weiss<\/a> has won the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/nobel_prizes\/physics\/laureates\/2017\/\">2017 Nobel Prize for physics<\/a>\u00a0along with Caltech colleagues Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, for their &#8220;decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/1721.1\/109512\">the discovery paper<\/a>\u00a0as well as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/libguides.mit.edu\/c.php?g=512578&amp;p=3502238\">open access resources on LIGO &amp; gravitational waves<\/a>:\u00a0an annotated collection of technical reports, peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, and theses, freely available in the <a href=\"https:\/\/dspace.mit.edu\/\">DSpace@MIT<\/a>\u00a0repository, that describe work done at MIT, from the earliest science to post-detection research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3276,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions\/3276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/scholarly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}