A year ago today, ripples in the fabric of spacetime triggered laser interferometers in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. After decades of unsuccessful searches (plus several more rumor-ridden months to confirm the result), physicists announced in February 2016 that they had finally directly detected gravitational waves.
The resounding chirp of black holes that merged more than a billion years ago has radically changed the astrophysics landscape. Researchers went from sweating over whether they could achieve a single detection to drawing up a road map of gravitational-wave astronomy. Following a powerful endorsement in last month’s mid-decadal survey, NASA is pushing for greater involvement in the once-floundering mission for a gravitational-wave observatory in space.
Meanwhile, the founders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)—Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Ronald Drever—have been racking up awards. They have collectively hauled in $3.7 million from four prizes, including $1 million from the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. (Notably, the remaining $2 million was split equally among more than 1000 LIGO contributors.)
The historic gravitational-wave signal that arrived on 14 September 2015. Credit: LIGO Scientific Collaboration
The question now is whether Thorne, Weiss, and Drever will receive an early morning phone call on 4 October. There are several reasons to think the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will come calling, including the gravity of the discovery and the shaky health of Drever. On the other hand, nominations for the 2016 Nobel were due 31 January, just before the 11 February press conference. Academy press officer Jessica Balksjö Nannini assures me that the deadline “really is the deadline.” Did a LIGO member or other insider on the Nobel nominating committee submit the names before the discovery was made public? If the LIGO trio’s names are called on the first Tuesday in October, we’ll know the answer is yes.
