Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss of US win Nobel Physics Prize for gravitational waves

STOCKHOLM: US astrophysicists Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Physics Prize on Thursday for their discovery of gravitational waves, the Nobel jury said.

Predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity but only first detected in 2015, gravitational waves are 'ripples' in the fabric of space-time caused by violent processes in the Universe, such as colliding black holes or the collapse of stellar cores.

"Their discovery shook the world," said Goran K Hansson, the head of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.