Rainer Weiss, Pioneer in Gravitational Wave Detection, Passes Away at 92

Rainer Weiss, a physicist honored with a Nobel Prize for creating an instrument that detects gravitational waves from cosmic events such as black hole mergers, has died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 92. His work played a crucial role in validating the Big Bang theory and Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

His passing at a hospital was confirmed by David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a collaborative project operated by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2017, Weiss, alongside physicists Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their instrumental role in building LIGO. This observatory famously captured the first gravitational wave signal two years prior — a distinctive 'chirp' generated by two black holes colliding approximately 1.3 billion years ago.

This landmark detection revolutionized astrophysics by confirming Einstein’s prediction that space and time could be distorted by accelerating massive objects.

At the time of the award announcement, Nils Martensson, acting chair of the Nobel physics committee, remarked that this achievement marked the beginning of a new era in astronomy focused on gravitational waves. Weiss, who conducted his research at MIT’s LIGO laboratory, received half of the prize, while Barish and Thorne, affiliated with Caltech, each received a quarter.