October 6, 2017
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the USA physicists Rainer Weiss (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Barry C. Barish, (California Institute of Technology) and Kip S. Thorne (California Institute of Technology) the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”.
On 14 September 2015, the universe’s gravitational waves were observed for the very first time. The waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago, came from a collision between two black holes. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to arrive at the LIGO detector in the USA.
The Nobel Laureate, Prof. Barry C. Barish visited CANDLE institute in February 2004, heading the USA Committee of Science and Technology (National Research Council of National Academies), to review the institute activity and perspectives of new synchrotron light facility creation in Armenia. The evaluation of CANDLE activity was summarized in the Committee report “Science and Technology in Armenia: Towards a Knowledge-Based Economy”. In particular, the Committee concluded that “The CANDLE institute is a place where the investments might lead to a major improvement in the Science and Technology infrastructure in Armenia”. The institute activity at that period was outlined also in CERN Courier, v44, N5, 2004.