(3 Oct 2017) Rainer Weiss, one of the three U.S.-based scientists to win the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday, talks about how humbling the honor is, knowing "that you happen to get something that people who are really giants in physics also got."
The three scienties were awarded the prize for detecting faint ripples flying through the universe - the gravitational waves predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein that provide a new understanding of the universe.
Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology won the 2017 prize for a combination of highly advanced theory and ingenious equipment design, Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences announced.
The scientists were key to the first observation of gravitational waves in September 2015.
When the discovery was announced several months later, it was a sensation not only among scientists but the general public.
The German-born Weiss was awarded half of the 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize amount and Thorne and Barish will split the other half.
Gravitational waves are extremely faint ripples in the fabric of space and time, generated by some of the most violent events in the universe.
The waves detected by the laureates came from the collision of two black holes some 1.3 billion light-years away. A light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles.

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