LIGO-VIRGOのノーベル賞受賞。国境を越えたコラボレーションの成果

Imagine placing a heavy ball in the middle of a large sheet which is being held taut. The ball will warp the sheet, creating a dent. An object placed close to the ball will fall towards it because of the dent. Similarly, the objects in the Universe also create “dents” or distortions in the fabric of space and time. Since these masses are also constantly in motion and spinning around each other, they send out ripples through spacetime. Lighter masses that come near the heavy mass will fall towards it. These ripples are called “gravitational waves”.

今から100年以上前の1915年、アルバート・アインシュタインは、宇宙空間にある大きな質量には、空間や時間をゆがめたり曲げたりする能力があると示唆し、この説は昨日まで理論として残っていたのである。

2017年10月3日に、ノーベル賞の 物理学 が受賞しました。 重力波を検出・記録したチームにマサチューセッツ工科大学（MIT）のライナー・ワイス、カリフォルニア工科大学（Caltech）のバリー・バリッシュとキップ・ソーンは、いずれもレーザー干渉計重力波観測装置（LIGO）チームのメンバーです。ヴァイスには900万クローナ（$110万円）の賞金の半分が贈られ、ソーンとバリッシュは残りの半分を分担することになります。彼らの発見は、現代における最大の科学的ブレークスルーのひとつとみなされている。

The gravitational waves generated by cosmic events diminish so much in strength by the time they reach the earth that only extremely sensitive detectors such as LIGO’s can pick them up. Though the waves have been detected three times before, on August 14, 2017, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the merging of two black holes was detected jointly by the LIGO detectors in the US (in Louisiana and Washington) and the Virgo detector in Europe  (Pisa, Italy).

のです。 LIGOプレスリリース は、次のように述べています。

“The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors. ”

この画期的な成果は、世界中のさまざまなパートナー組織や研究所が国境を越えて協力した結果である。カリフォルニア工科大学とマサチューセッツ工科大学が運営するLIGOは、米国国立科学財団（NSF）の資金援助を受け、オーストラリア、ドイツ、イギリスから検出器建設のための資金援助を受けています。また、このプロジェクトは 対応済み by India, Italy, Spain, Scotland, Korea, Canada, Scotland, the European Union, Hungary and Taiwan, among others. Its リサーチ partners are collaborative organizations in themselves, based in Europe, US, Japan and Australia.

As an organization that believes in democratizing access to scientific research, we believe the greatest innovation are the products of cross-border and interdisciplinary collaboration. Recently, we helped an engineer, who was researching Einstein’s gravity, find an 専門物理学者 to help him visualize spacetime and plot graphs for curved spacetime. Dr. Lester Ingber, an alumni of Caltech, is an acclaimed physicist who is the Principal Investigator (PI) of an NSF-funded supercomputer project. Kolabtree’s global pool of フリーランスの科学者MIT、Stanford、Harvardなどの出身者が、世界中のさまざまな科学プロジェクトに参加し、科学研究の共同作業の真の精神を体現しています。

Effective collaboration helps scientists break geographical and financial restrictions, and allows access to skills, knowledge and expertise that would otherwise be unavailable. Making research available, affordable and accessible spurs innovation and development. Who would have thought that Einstein’s idea, now a hundred years old, would finally be realized and win one of the most prestigious awards on this planet?