Here’s a welcome respite from the ongoing hellscape of GOP-dominated America:
Three American physicists have won the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago.
Rainer Weiss has been awarded one half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£825,000) prize, announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm today. Kip Thorne and Barry Barish will share the other half of the prize.
If you want to listen to a gravitational wave — the sound of two black holes colliding — here you go:
For more detail on what the prize is for, here’s a lovely, relatively brief lecture — very accessible — on gravitational waves and what it took to detect them, delivered by my MIT colleague Nergis Mavalvala:
And if you want to go a bit deeper, MIT’s Rainer Weiss, one of the three laureates, offers longer, somewhat more technical account:
You can follow this prize — as so many before it — back to Albert Einstein. As Mavalvala explains, the concept of the gravitational wave emerges directly from Einstein’s theory of gravity, the General Theory of Relativity.
To say “directly” is, as usual, a bit of misrepresentation.
Yes: calculation within Einstein’s 1915 theory does end up at a prediction of gravitational waves, but neither the history of that calculation nor the human story moved down anything like a straight path. First, in 1905, Henri Poincare suggested that gravity waves might exist. Then, in 1915, with his new mathematics of gravity, Einstein began to wonder if his theory would yield such waves, soon concluded it would not, then revisited the question, still during WW I, and proposed that three different examples of gravitational oscillations might actually be real. Then, 1922, Arthur Eddington (who had led the eclipse expeditions that confirmed the underlying general theory three years before) showed that two of the three forms Einstein had proposed were mathematical mistakes, born of the choice of coordinate system Einstein used for his earlier calculation.
Einstein pursued other projects for a while, returning to gravitational waves in the 1930s, after emigrating to the US. Working with an assistant, Nathan Rosen (of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox-that-isn’t), he wrote a paper concluding that gravitational waves do not exist, full stop. The two men submitted the paper to Physical Review, which then sent it on for review. The reviewer, Howard Percy Robertson, found a confounding error. On being informed, Albert Einstein was not amused:
Einstein’s reaction was anger and indignation; he sent the following note to [PR editor John] Tate [10]:
July 27, 1936Dear Sir.“We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.”RespectfullyEinstein…
Infeld refers to the day before a scheduled talk that Einstein was to give at Princeton on the “Nonexistence of gravitational waves”. Einstein was already aware of the error in his manuscript, which was previously pointed out by Infeld. There was no time to cancel the talk. The next day Einstein gave his talk and concluded, “If you ask me whether there are gravitational waves or not, I must answer that I don’t know. But it is a highly interesting problem”
“…After finding relationships that cast doubt on the existence of gravitational fields rigorous wavelike solutions, we have thoroughly investigated the case of cylindrical gravitational waves. As a result, there are strict solutions and the problem is reduced to conventional cylindrical waves in Euclidean space”.
“I want to thank my colleague Professor Robertson for their friendly help in clarifying the original error.”
The issue remained, though, that gravitational waves were complicated to model, and hence even to imagine detecting. The article linked above and again here is a history of the idea, and it shows how much thinking and doing — for decades — went into the moment of discovery this prize celebrates.
And that just gets us to the gate of the work behind this year’s physics Nobel. Weiss first came up with the idea for the detector that ultimately heard two black holes colliding almost exactly fifty years ago, after teaching MIT’s introduction to general relativity. The next decade, he began the collaboration with fellow laureate Kip Thorne, the near legendary Caltech general relativist, to advance the idea of a large-scale interferometer as a gravity wave observatory. The next key collaborators, Ronald Drever, who died last year last March, and the third prize-winner, particle physicist and large-machine-expert [per valued commenter dmislev] Barry Barish, credited with the transformation of Weiss’s original notion into a full fledged and ultimately enormous lab, joined soon after. The actual detection took place a mere four decades on.
And it’s beautiful — as Einstein once said of other work, an example of “the highest form of musicality in the sphere” of scientific endeavor. The scale, the unholy precision, and the extraordinary extension of human perception into the most forbidding recesses of the universe are simply sublime, glorious and terrifying. In these wretched political times, the notion that some of our species can create on such an encompassing canvas is…a balm, at least.
And, not to harsh that mellow, but because everything is political to me these days, a final thought. Einstein, an immigrant, discovered the underlying concept. Rai Weiss, born in Berlin in 1932, escaped with his family from the Nazis first to Prague and then New York. Mavalvala, featured above, a key contributor to the ultimate instrument that made the detection, came to the US to pursue knowledge at the highest level from her home in Turkey Pakistan [I apologize for the error]. Many, many more people from all over dedicated days and nights and years of their working lives to making this happen.
This is the intellectual and cultural capacity the GOP seeks to erode. That makes them philistines, and worse: saboteurs of the American capacity to create both basic science and all the expected and unanticipated possibilities for human well being that flow from “musicality in scientific thought.”
rikyrah
Congrats to him.
Over my head, but, he must be IT if he won the Nobel.
Jeffro
Well said! It’s probably a silly thought, but if more folks – all folks? – had a chance to take an astronomy course from a good teacher/professor, the world would be a vastly better place.
In the meantime, we are left with the almost heartbreaking dichotomy of being able to see into the furthest reaches of time and space, yet still be so short-sighted and horrible to each other.
“…Astrophysics at our fingertips
And we’re standing at the summit
And some man with a joystick
Lands a rocket on a comet
We’re living in an age
Where limitations are forgotten
The outer edges move and dazzle us
But the core is something rotten..” – DBTs, “What It Means“
Mike E
So, Einstein proved the Oprah Winfrey Effect?
oatler.
“…billions and billions…we are star-stuff…” I miss Carl Sagan.
Cheryl Rofer
Thanks, Tom. We as a country do so many things well.
Not so much the election of 2016, though.
Cermet
Consider that an atom is 10^-10 meters wide (if one takes an apple as the size of the Earth, then an atom would be the size of an apple growing on that Earth), and the nucleus is 10^-5 smaller still than an atom; now a proton is a bit smaller than the nucleus (say 10^-2 or so); then a gravity wave moves a proton by only 10^-5 of its diameter …these ripples are beyond small – no wonder, once Einstein believed in them, he said no one would ever detect these things.
Francis Logan
BJuicers: Tom’s book, The Quest for Vulcan, is wonderful and perfectly accessible for non-physicists.
Thanks for this post, Tom. In these horrible days it’s great to be reminded of the great potential of humankind. I’ve read that the LIGO machines are so sensitive that they can detect gravity waves smaller in amplitude than the width of a proton. That’s incredible.
Humboldtblue
To add to the welcome of Professor Levenson’s post as a wonderful distraction, here’s a short clip from the Invictus Games to help clean the palate as well.
Humboldtblue
@Francis Logan: I’m halfway through.
Ten Bears
Substance!
dmsilev
One very minor correction on a great post:
Dr. Drever actually passed away just a few months ago (May, if memory serves).
And a bit more detail on the second half of your sentence: Barry Barish, whose background was in particle physics rather than gravity, took over the project and it was really his particle physics background that was the important thing. More specifically, it was his background and experience managing the construction of large scientific facilities (particle accelerators) and establishing broad-based collaborations needed both to construct and to properly utilize said facilities, that made him the key player in turning LIGO from a concept into a reality.
NotMax
But – but – it’s only a theory.
/RWNJ
MattF
The first part of this link has an accessible-to-physicists-who-are-not-specialists discussion of gravitational waves. One very peculiar thing about gravitational waves is that (because of the Equivalence Principle) their existence can’t be confirmed from data taken at a single point– which (I’m guessing) is why you need something very large and very two dimensional, like LIGO. And yeah, it’s all extremely amazing.
MattF
I’m stuck in moderation. For some reason.
NotMax
Gravitational waves: what the Silver Surfer rides to get from place to place.
;)
Cermet
@Francis Logan: Yes, a good book that is very easy to read but informative as well as satisfying – really lets one see what the issue was all about and how Einstein finally solved it. Enjoyed reading it.
Elizabelle
Above my pay grade, but congratulations Laureates. Very proud and happy for you.
CaseyL
Oh, how I needed this! Celebrating pure scientific research is always a mood lifter; about the only thing that gives me hope for our species.
Also, I hope there are more videos of Dr. Mavalvala explaining things. She’s wonderful. I’d sign up for her lectures in a heartbeat.
MattF
Ah. Just figured out why my first comment went into moderation. There’s an unmentionable something embedded in a word.
Vogon Pundit
Beautifully written, Tom. Thank you .
Roger Moore
@Cermet:
The truly amazing thing isn’t so much that we’re able to detect a movement that small; it’s that we’re able to separate the movements that small that are caused by gravity waves from all the other phenomena that might cause the detector to shake.
I have a very small connection to LIGO. When I was an undergraduate at Caltech, I worked as a waiter in the faculty club, The Athenaeum. When the collaborators were at Caltech for a meeting, they would almost always have lunch there- what else is the point of a faculty club- and I would often be their waiter. When I heard about the details of the project (mostly from my brother, who is now a professor of theoretical physics) I couldn’t imagine that they could ever get it to work. It only took them about 25 more years.
Gary K
I’m surprised to see that Einstein wrote that he and his co-authors
For as long as I have been a professional mathematician, the process for getting a paper into a journal has been to submit it so that it can be sent to a specialist for refereeing. Was he really expecting acceptance without review?
SFBayAreaGal
@oatler.: I do too. My introduction into Astronomy class at my local community college, used Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series for part of our lessons.
Cermet
@Roger Moore: That must have been fun! I once got to ask Sir Roger Penrose a question (he liked it and thought I was correct relative to an issue about black hole information x-fer.) More to the point, the engineering of any great scientific device is an amazing feat that the tech’s building it and engineer’s designing it rarely get much credit!
Interesting that Virgo got on line just in time to catch another similar system along with the Ligo’s, and together these have narrowed the locations of this event. When the Japanese one gets up and running, and Ligo gets it improvements, even more amazing discoveries will occur. Science advances towards a ‘star trek’ level as politics of republicans remain stone age … .
dmsilev
@Roger Moore:
That’s one of the reasons why LIGO was built as a pair of detectors a couple thousand miles apart; if you see a signal on one but not the other of the detectors, chances are it’s spurious and was probably from a truck driving by or a tiny earthquake or the like. The vibration-reduction system inside the detectors is a terrifyingly complex object as well.
The Pale Scot
But Dude, is it surfable?
I go swimming in the ocean (baby ocean, the Gulf) almost everyday, unless it’s too hot or the water smells stale. While floating past the break enjoying the swell, it came to me that according to theory, the gravities of galaxies millions of LYs away have influence on the water’s action, and I’m really floating in the universe.
So, surfing the 60 footers on the Cortez Bank
randy khan
I love the Nobel Prizes because of the annual reminder of the great things humans can do. I know there’s a ton of politics (particularly for the Literature and Peace prizes), but even “bad” winners almost always have done something sublime.
NotMax
Science related – is Musk putting all his space eggs in one big effin’ basket?
Initial reaction upon reading about the BFR and plans for it is that the time frame is maybe not quite wildly but very greatly optimistic.
MattF
@The Pale Scot: Sounds like Freud’s Oceanic Feeling.
Roger Moore
@Cermet:
I was always sure that more real business got done over lunch at the Ath than in all the administration buildings over the rest of the day. Or rather the decisions got made over lunch, and the stuff that got done in the rest of the day was the busy work of implementing them. And I can assure you there’s a lot of truth to what they say about servants being invisible to the people they’re serving; people would happily discuss stuff in front of us that probably should have been kept until we were out of the room.
NotMax
@NotMax
Sigh. Bad linky.
Corrected.
No Drought No More
It is eminently fair to describe republicans as philistines, but I’ll take it even further: republicans are anti-American. Each and every one of them are no better than Jeff Davis Americans, on the march ever backwards, intent on the destruction of the American experiment in democracy.
Great read. The next time I climb down off my high horse feeling silly, I’ll take some solace in recalling that Einstein, too, was only human.
Cermet
@NotMax: While not relevant to this thread I will just say he is a nutcase; first off, no one can send average people on such a mission for so many reasons I could fill a book with the reasons. However, the basic one is the cramp quarters for years is not something anyone not careful selected and trained for could endure. Yet this misses the critical point – the level of cosmic rays and for the Mars surface, add neutron radiation threat is not insignificant and not something even for an average trip is all that safe. As for living on Mars, not really viable (visit for a short time, yes but live there? Not gonna work due to that level of radiation.) Yes, consider under ground but those logistics are huge and again, space is a premium and not something anyone would long endure. This guy has got to limit his coke usage.
Leto
@The Pale Scot: Asking the real questions! I can’t wait to do this in the future.
Matt McIrvin
The most exciting thing about the result isn’t that it’s yet another confirmation of general relativity, it’s that this is, effectively, a new kind of telescope that can see things never seen before, opening up a whole new field of astronomy. The black hole collisions they’re observing aren’t the ones they expected to observe. Every new observing technique uncovers some kind of surprise.
NotMax
@Cermet
Seems perfectly relevant to a thread tagged Science & Technology.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: Impossibly optimistic time frames are part of Elon Musk’s brand at this point.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Absolutely. A brand-new measurement device always means that whole classes of theories get swept away by actual measurements.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Did you ever run into Feynman?
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
He died a couple of years before I started. A friend of mine grew up one the same street as his family and car pooled to school with his son. A coworker of my father’s, who went to Tech many years before I did, had Feynman for freshman physics and Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry! That said, you naturally get to serve a lot of Nobel laureates (and future laureates) working at the Athenaeum. I think this pushes my list past 10.
Amir Khalid
@Gary K:
Some big-name writers get so big(-headed) that they can bully editors into not daring to touch their already perfect, dontcha know, manuscripts: “too big to edit”, people say. Albert Einstein was already a big-name scientist at that time. I guess this is an example of the scientist’s version: too big to peer-review.
John Weiss
“This is the intellectual and cultural capacity the GOP seeks to erode. That makes them philistines, and worse: saboteurs of the American capacity to create both basic science and all the expected and unanticipated possibilities for human well being that flow from “musicality in scientific thought.”’
How very well said. The barbarians are at the gate. No rest for the ‘wicked’, eh?
Tom Levenson
@dmsilev: Thanks for the correction, now implemented.
Tom Levenson
@Francis Logan:Many thanks!: The book can be found here in various editions, for anyone interested!
@Cermet: And many thanks to you as well!
StudlyPantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Yes, but what is the sound of one black hole colliding?
All seriousness aside, I love geeking out on this physics stuff. Thx for the vids, Tom! Looking forward to diving headlong into them.
Roger Moore
@Gary K:
Peer review as it is currently practiced is a relatively new invention. There were plenty of journals that relied predominantly or exclusively on the editor’s judgment about what was fit to print. It wasn’t until after WWII that peer review was seen as the benchmark for scientific publishing. Even after WWII, there were still hold-outs; it was only within that past couple of decades that PNAS required more review than having a paper signed off on by a member of the National Academy.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Leto: Calls for a soundtrack: http://www.google.com/url?q=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DuoERl34Ld00&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjZy5L2q9XWAhXKNiYKHdUjCdwQtwIIXTAM&usg=AOvVaw2po3b6GLLU0YwNC7FlMnqm
The Pale Scot
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Joe’s great but I’m old school The Challengers – Pipeline