
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 - runesoerensen
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html
======
klogw
This interview with Rana X Adhikari from Caltech who is involved with LIGO
does give a perspective on the technical difficulties in carrying out such
precise measurements and eliminating noise: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-
technical-challenges-of-mea...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-technical-
challenges-of-measuring-gravitational-waves-rana-adhikari-of-ligo/)

Also to me, it seems that Barry Barish got his share of the Nobel more as he
was the leader of the LIGO project and less due to his direct involvement with
some experimental or theoretical work as is the case with most Nobel prize. Am
I wrong in saying that? Also if this is true then has this occurred in past
also when someone was awarded a Nobel prize more because of their leadership
in starting a project or an institution then their direct involvement with the
actual work?

~~~
knowThySelfx
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._C._George_Sudarshan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._C._George_Sudarshan)

[http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/aug/10/diracs-...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/aug/10/diracs-
birthday-medal-awarded-to-weak-force-pioneers)

George Sudarshan was nominated about 5 times and never got it.

~~~
asavinov
The idea of using laser interferometer for detecting gravitational waves was
first proposed in 1962 (shortly after inventing lasers) by M. Gertsenshtein
and V. Pustovoit [1]. So it took more than 50 years from the idea to its
implementation.

[1] [http://www.jetp.ac.ru/cgi-
bin/dn/r_043_0605.pdf](http://www.jetp.ac.ru/cgi-bin/dn/r_043_0605.pdf) (in
Russian, Abstract in English at the end).

------
mabbo
The key achievement, imho:

> In the mid-1970s, Rainer Weiss had already analysed possible sources of
> background noise that would disturb measurements, and had also designed a
> detector, a laser-based interferometer, which would overcome this noise.

Over 40 years ago, Weiss figured out _how_ to do it. And finally, within his
lifetime, he got to see it happen and actually work.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Here at MIT, there was some discussion if he would get it at all -- the
experimentalists were not included for the Higgs 2013. It's great that they
gave him half of it!

~~~
lokimedes
Good thing he did. As for the Higgs discovery, the nature of the experimental
facilities and the generations of physicists who designed them would have made
it very difficult to point to singular recipients. Since the prize is never
given to collaborations, the best alternative whould have been the
spokespersons for ATLAS and CMS and perhaps the LHC/CERN director. But still
that would have been misrepresenting the efforts of thousands. I think the
Nobel Committee should fix this by allowing the prize to be awarded to
collaborations. (An accepting, but slightly disgruntled co-discoverer of a new
particle)

~~~
KGIII
I think there is also room for more prestigious awards to be named and given
out. Perhaps one could function exclusively to shine a light on collaborative
efforts?

I also think there's a little that some of us can do in this same/similar
space. Maybe not at this scale, but quite a few of us have sold their company
and made a few dollars. It's not terribly expensive to start a small managed
trust and provide things like scholarships in perpetuity. It's not the
prestige of a Nobel, but it's a little something that can go a long ways.

~~~
davrosthedalek
In that sense, we should also think about crowd-founded science. For example,
travel costs are always a problem. There are also many table-top experiments
which could be realized just with a small cash infusion. Most contributions to
universities do not actually benefit an experiment in a direct way.

~~~
specialist
I'm very interested novel funding strategies.

A friend of mine is directly funding early stage research related to Lyme
Disease. Like an angel investor? Helping to bridge the gap between an idea and
applying for grants.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Please thank you friend for me. Edit: Altruistic angel investor, I would call
it. There is no pay-out coming, except maybe for acknowledgment in a paper and
pride to have helped.

------
mstade
This is probably the first time I actually recognize the name of one of the
recipients: Kip Thorne. I learned about him when I read about the movie
Interstellar, for which he was an executive producer. Then when reading up on
him, it turns out he's been involved with a bunch of things I've read about or
seen in the past.

When I saw the announcement, I was unreasonably happy for a person I've never
known nor met. Funny what a little recognition can do.

~~~
nothis
I believe we're in a small golden age for science fiction. There were
completely wack aspects to Interstellar but it's still the most "science-y"
science-fiction movie to make a mainstream impact since... 2001: A Space
Odyssey, basically. I was so happy. I'd say that an executive producer and
scientific advisor of the movie winning a _nobel prize in physics_ is a sign
that this is about as serious as a Hollywood-budget science fiction movie can
get. It's great. Part of me wants to make a sarcastic joke about corn fields
and bookshelves, now, but fuck it, those shots of the wormhole alone more than
make up for it!

~~~
likelynew
I think it's a stretch by far to call either Interstellar or 2001: A Space
Odyssey most scientifically accurate movie. Using a correct simulation of
black hole is one thing, but this alone does not make necessarily make it very
accurate. This is not the first time I am seeing this, and I don't know it
pops up everywhere. There are parts in the movies which make me cringe, like
bending gravity by hands inside a black hole, and giving some strange bar
code. Or the highly incorrect approximation of probability from TARS. If I
were to select an interesting scientifically accurate sci-fi movie, I would
select martian or primer. The later is more consistent than what is evident on
watching it for first time.

~~~
ovrdrv3
I think he was talking more about "mainstream impact" than accuracy in his
comment. How many average Joes that maybe didn't care for science and space
are now interested because of movies like this? And for ones that already
liked science and space it was awesome to see an abstract thought (more
dimensions) put into play in Interstellar, that maybe got them even more
interested in making contributions towards teams like LIGO? Although there was
a lot of silly things in the movie I would like to think movies like those are
pretty inspiring nonetheless.

------
nickcw
Kip Thorne (with others) wrote the standard text book I used at university on
Gravity: "Gravitation"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_\(book\))

It is a mighty tome, with lots of advanced maths (like tensor calculus), and I
can't say I got through very much of it as a Physics undergraduate!

I was pleased to see him pop up again as a science adviser for the movie
Interstellar and have enjoyed reading his much more accessible book - "The
Science of Interstellar"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Interstellar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Interstellar)

------
byebyetech
Congratulations to Kip Thorne. I used to attend his lectures and sometimes
greet him in the parking lot if I happen to come across at Caltech. Even
though Caltech is not far from Hollywood I always thought these people are the
real super stars. Caltech has probably 20+ Nobel laureates.

~~~
KGIII
Your post made me curious. I hit up Google and got a result that may turn into
a bit of a time sink.

If you're very busy, you may not want to click on this link:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_u...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation)

I was a bit surprised by some of the results. I honestly wasn't expecting
Harvard to be that high. MIT was right where I expected it to be. CalTech was
lower than I expected, but your number is too low.

Berkeley really surprised me.

~~~
antognini
Caltech is still a relatively small school with about 300 professors, so it's
not that surprising to me that it's down the list in raw numbers. In terms of
Nobel laureates per capita it beats MIT and Harvard.

If you ever visit the Berkeley campus you may notice that they have special
parking spots reserved for Nobel laureates:

[http://cenblog.org/newscripts/files/2010/07/CIMG3733-compres...](http://cenblog.org/newscripts/files/2010/07/CIMG3733-compress.jpg)

~~~
scentoni
And given the difficulty of parking at Berkeley, that is probably lusted after
more than the prize money.

------
lisper
A video describing the LIGO mirror suspension:

[https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20170216v](https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20170216v)

It's worth watching. The engineering behind just this part of the system is
jaw-dropping.

------
maaaats
How normal is it for the Nobel Prizes to be for something done so recently?
Often I feel the stuff is at least a decade old, if not decades.

(Other than the Peace one, which is supposed to be for the last year).

~~~
vanderZwan
Well, let's put it this way: some of my friends (who unlike me didn't drop out
of physics) were discussing if LIGO would get the Nobel Prize this morning,
and the main point wasn't whether it was deserved ( _everyone_ agreed to
that), but that the Nobel Prize doesn't get awarded that quickly most of the
time.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
I'm just a casual observer so I'm probably way off, so grain of salt but, I
believe we'll see more prizes get awarded more quickly as the people who
initially lay out the theoretical physics and design the experiments to test
their hypothesis are no longer living long enough to see the results of their
experiments because the technology to test their ideas lags so far behind what
would be needed. Just think of Higgs and the fact that the LHC had to be
planned, funded, built, and then used to confirm the Higgs-Boson. Same deal
with LIGO.

~~~
pducks32
The big piece of LIGO was the incredible effort that went into data analysis
and verification. The second these things were detected a monumental effort
went into confirming it meaning when it happened again the methods were
already in place. This heavily contributed to how quickly these results were
accepted.

------
melling
Kip S. Thorne

Should be a household name. He has written several books and was consulted by
Christopher Nolan for the movie Interstellar:

[https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-
Thorne/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-
Thorne/dp/0393351378)

~~~
peter303
Kip Thorne was sort of hippie physicist in the 1970s. But CalTech recognized
his brillance in hiring him.

Generality Relativity was sort of a graveyard from 1920s to 1960s because
there were too few doable experiments and specialized solutions of the core
equation was intractable. Then several thing gelled then. Clever physicists
like Thorne and Hawking started developing specialized GR solutions. Computer
numerical methods could find other solutions. Atomic clocks became sensitive
to measure GR in Earth’s gravity. GR is now a routinely observed effect
observed billions of times a day in computing GPS positions.

------
selimthegrim
I'm disappointed Ron Drever wasn't remembered - but I hope he will get
mentioned in the speeches.

------
indescions_2017
Congrats to three truly brilliant scientists. This is how Hard Sci/Tech is
done. Decades long commitments even when everyone around you thinks it
impossible!

For a gripping day by day account of advanced LIGO's first candidate detection
event and ensuing aftermath. From the very first email with subject line:
"Very interesting event on ER8". To publishing the breakout paper “Observation
of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger”. Read Harry Collins'
Gravity's Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gravitys-
kiss](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gravitys-kiss)

------
FBISurveillance
This is a well deserved one. I've been watching LIGO back from their first
announcement last year.

Really happy with their progress and happy to see taxpayer dollars well spent.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Very true. Also congratulations to the hosting institutes and funding
agencies, who allowed to keep them going for 40 years.

------
dandare
It reminded me of this old article describing various sources of gravitational
waves and our ability to detect them.

[http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave_spectrum.ht...](http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave_spectrum.html)

I don't know how accurate it is today but I remember being fascinated by the
possibilities.

------
tryingagainbro
From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO)
_Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of
detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry.

These can detect a change in the 4 km mirror spacing of less than a ten-
thousandth the charge diameter of a proton, equivalent to measuring the
distance to Proxima Centauri with an accuracy smaller than the width of a
human hair_

Wow, feeling like a true parasite, relatively a few brilliant people are doing
the heavy lifting. These guys should be the real Michael Jordans (nothing
against Jordan or sports)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Would be really interesting to read a undergrad level piece on how they
exclude [systematic] errors ... that accuracy makes me wonder many things,
like what temperatures they're using and what the expansivity of common
materials (steel, say) at those temps. What's the contraction (expansion) per
km of the Earth like, can you detect flexing in the crust?

/lazy-digression

~~~
KGIII
Don't be bashful, email one of the people listed in the papers. There's surely
some published research with names attached.

Be clear, don't be verbose, be polite, and be grateful, thanking them for
their time and contributions. Be sure to mention that the award was what
triggered your curiosity.

Also, make sure to ask them to put you in touch with the right person, if they
aren't the right person. You're probably looking for someone with 'materials'
near their name. There may also be a coordinator for the project. If so, first
try them.

Seriously, go ahead and ask. Chances are, you're even welcome to ask follow up
questions. I'm retired but I always enjoyed it when people legitimately wanted
to know more about what I was doing. It was only a problem if I was busy, but
I still made time. It just sometimes took a while.

~~~
davrosthedalek
I second that. While the people in the limelight will probably get a ton of
requests right now and might not find time to answer, the "lower" ranks will.

I'm a scientist myself, and it's always nice to get feedback/questions from
interested people outside of the community, especially if they are not
peddling their pet "theory" and are honestly willing to learn, read papers
etc.

~~~
KGIII
It is too late to edit it. If I could, I'd change it to suggest they not be
more verbose than absolutely needed. Put time and effort into writing it, as
they will be putting time and effort int responding to it. That time can be
used to ensure the grammar is acceptable, the questions clear, and the message
as concise as it can reasonably be.

Given the popularity of this project, and all the media attention, I suspect
they are fairly busy.

Like you, though past-tense, I loved having interested people contact me for
more information. I didn't even mind if they were also my business
competition. Sometimes, the projects I worked on had a public face and yet was
great - but it sometimes reached the point where it was eating into my limited
time.

I'm more than happy to share what I know, what I am doing, and how I got
there. What I was doing was innovative and there was more business than we
could reasonably handle. (I helped move traffic modeling to the computer age
and would later expand into pedestrian traffic modeling.)

------
lifeisstillgood
I try to have an analogy for humanity's place in the universe. I think the
best is a colony of ants floating on a branch in the Pacific Ocean. But with
careful attention to wind, smell those ants have worked out shipping and
landmass. Now they just found out how to detect Skyscrapers. One day they will
be able to read the menus at the deli by Central Park. Let's discuss science
funding again shall we?

------
TorKlingberg
I hope all this means there will be funding for LISA. Basically an enormous
LIGO in space, so no earth vibrations and no tunnels needed.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna)

------
debt
I visited the LIGO at Caltech a few months before they discovered
gravitational waves cause I was such a hipster nerd about it.

It's strange because they're just a few nondescript buildings in the middle of
the campus yet they're there detecting lil nano hems and haws in the fabric of
the universe.

~~~
tanderson92
The actual instruments are not at Caltech. The instruments next to Central
Engineering Services / Steele House / Annenberg are just test equipment afaik.
The instrument sites are in Washington and Louisiana.

------
dumbfounder
It blows my mind that accelerating a mass gives off gravitational waves. But
it makes total sense since mass increases with speed, if only the tiniest bit
until you get close to the speed of light. Which is probably why you can't
detect the waves unless you have some massive event (pun intended) like 2
black holes colliding.

Do those waves come at a cost of energy? Just what the heck is a gravitational
wave?

~~~
dumbfounder
And can those waves be refracted, reflected, and/or focused?

~~~
comicjk
Sure - you manipulate gravity waves using large masses (the only thing we know
of which interacts with gravity). It's not very practical to move stars around
in order to make a lens, though.

------
leeoniya
are there videos of the acceptance speeches or ceremonies anywhere? i always
want to watch them. are they televised or streamed?

~~~
greeneggs
The Nobel lectures given by the recipients are generally targeted at a broad
audience, and some of the lectures are extremely good. The ceremony is in
Stockholm on Dec. 9.

You can see the old speeches if you choose the year, then click on the
laureate and "Nobel lecture." The older ones only have illustrated transcripts
available---no video---but I still recommend them.

[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/19...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/stormer-
lecture.html)

~~~
leeoniya
this is sad:
[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundati...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundation/publications/lectures/)

everything is basically paywalled.

we get to see teen choice awards shived down our throats but the speeches of
the greatest minds of our times are inaccessible.

~~~
greeneggs
No, all the Nobel speeches are there, from the link I gave. They are the same
speeches, with the same illustrations and the same English translations, as
you get in those books. Even the biographical sketches are the same. I don't
know that the books include anything not on the website.

------
bdz
Love the popular science and scientific background PDFs.

------
physicsnerd
This has great implications for blockchain. The interferometer is basically a
blockchain at it's core. The trust circle it generates enables physicist to
investigate bigger and bigger beams. Very excited!

~~~
StavrosK
I am entirely unsure whether you're joking.

~~~
fsck--off
The account is 25 minutes old, so I would assume so

~~~
BasDirks
And as we all know, after 25 minutes of exposure to HN, one loses any and all
sense of humor.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
Dear lord, do the Germans know we're encroaching on their turf?

~~~
davrosthedalek
As a German, I don't find this funny.

~~~
StavrosK
That joke was so self-referential my brain short-circuited, well done.

------
eatbitseveryday
Are gravitational waves = "gravimetric distortion" [1]?

[1] [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Gravimetric_distortion](http://memory-
alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Gravimetric_distortion)

