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Nobel vật lý 2017.
The 2017 Nobel prize in physics has been awarded to three US scientists for the detection of gravitational waves.
Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish will share the nine million kronor (£831,000) prize.
The ripples were predicted by Albert Einstein and are a fundamental consequence of his General Theory of Relativity.
The winners are members of the Ligo-Virgo observatories, which were responsible for the breakthrough.
The winners join a prestigious list of 204 other Physics laureates recognised since 1901.
Prof Weiss gets half of the prize money, while Barish and Thorne will share the other half
Gravitational waves describe the stretching and squeezing of space-time that occurs when massive objects accelerate.
The warping of space resulting from the merger of two black holes was initially picked up by the US Ligo laboratory in 2015 - the culmination of a decades-long quest.
Three more examples have been detected since then.
Gravitational waves - Ripples in the fabric of space-time
■ Gravitational waves are a prediction of the Theory of General Relativity
■ It took decades to develop the technology to directly detect them
■ They are ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by violent events
■ Accelerating masses will produce waves that propagate at the speed of light
■ Detectable sources ought to include merging black holes and neutron stars
■ Ligo/Virgo fire lasers into long, L-shaped tunnels; the waves disturb the light
■ Detecting the waves opens up the Universe to completely new investigations
Speaking at a press conference, Olga Botner, from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said: "The first ever observation of a gravitational wave was a milestone - a window on the Universe."
The US Ligo and European Virgo laboratories were built to detect the very subtle signal of these waves.
Rainer Weiss, one of the winners, said the discovery was the work of about 1,000 people.
But the Nobel trio's contribution is also regarded as fundamental.
Weiss set out the strategy that would be needed to make a detection.
Thorne did much of the theoretical work that underpinned the quest.
And Barish, who took over as the second director of Ligo in 1994, is credited with driving through organisational reforms and technology choices that would ultimately prove pivotal in the mission's success.
Previous winners of the Nobel Prize in physics
2016 - David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz shared the award for their work on rare phases of matter.
2015 - Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald were awarded the prize the discovery that neutrinos switch between different "flavours".
2014 - Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura won the physics Nobel for developing the first blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
2013 - Francois Englert and Peter Higgs shared the spoils for formulating the theory of the Higgs boson particle.
2012 - Serge Haroche and David J Wineland were awarded the prize for their work with light and matter.
2011 - The discovery that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating earned Saul Perlmutter, Brian P Schmidt and Adam Riess the physics prize.
2010 - Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the prize for their discovery of the "wonder material" graphene.
Congrats U.S.A.
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