Einstein’s academic heirs win physics Nobel

Three U.S.-based scientists won the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday for detecting gravitational waves rippling through space as Albert Einstein predicted a century ago. The discovery energized the scientific world with confirmation of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which posits that 3-D space and time are woven in a single continuum, commonly called a fabric, that can stretch, shrink, and tremble. The existence of gravitational waves was also good news for creationists, as Jeff Zwirink, an astrophysicist at UCLA, explained at the time: “If general relativity is correct, that implies there is a beginning to the universe, and if there is a beginning, then there is a beginner.” Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology share the Nobel prize for the discovery.