Yesterday it was announced that Cal-Tech scientist and researcher Kip Thorne had been selected to share the Nobel Prize in Physics this year with two other guys. The work he did to earn his prize was on the LIGO project. Detection of gravity waves. LIGO is a very complex system involving using Lasers in a method similar (sort of) to RADAR to detect minor ripples in space.

What is truely amazing about this to me, is that Dr. Thorne et al. proved what Albert Einsten had suggested as part of General Relativity 112 years ago. Dr. Einstein had no lasers nor any of the equipment used today. In fact the Laser itself was invented about 8 years after his death based on his work. Dr. Einstein in fact came up with this idea using nothing more than his brain! 112 years ago he had no equipment at all; he just thought about it, and turned out right.

19 years after Dr. Einstein passed on, (1974) the United States Air Force proved his theory of Special Relativity to be correct.

62 years after Dr. Einstein pased on, we have proven General Relativity.

Wow.

So they got an award for proving another's theory with equipment from 112 years in the future?

When thought of on those terms it doesn't seem like a big deal. But it is!

To get an idea of how truly mind-blowing LIGO is:

The Absurdity of Detecting Gravitational Waves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iphcyNWFD10

Perhaps the most exquisite machinery ever created. And the fact that we built something in modern times that captured and recorded an event that occurred 1.3 billion years ago is amazing!

Ron