天文学奖
2016

2016年度邵逸夫天文学奖平均颁予罗奈尔特．德雷弗 (Ronald W P Drever)、基普．索恩 (Kip S Thorne) 及雷纳．韦斯 (Rainer Weiss)，以表彰他们对「激光干涉仪重力波观测站」LIGO 的构思和设计。LIGO最近首次直接观测到重力波，为天文探索开创了一个新方法。而首先侦测到的非凡事例为两个星级质量的黑洞合并。

 

这发现於2016年公布[1]，被誉为天文学上最有意义的发现之一，其重要性可从多个不同的角度观看。简而言之，以前只能通过电磁 辐射或高能粒子观察宇宙，现在LIGO却提供了第三个方法。因此，LIGO创建了一个全新的天文学分支，在完全缺乏其他天文信号的 情况下，都能让我们观察和研究天文现象。这项新方法有著革命性的影响，犹如射电天文学当年出现，脉冲星和类星体才跟著被发现。

Ronald Drever, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss are the primary figures responsible for the conception and design of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). LIGO’s recent direct detection of gravitational waves represents the first probe of physics in the limit of strong gravity, where massive objects moving at velocities close to that of light drive nonlinear waves in spacetime. LIGO’s discovery ranks among the most significant ever made in astronomy, and its importance can be viewed from a number of distinct perspectives. Most simply, LIGO has provided a third strand to the means by which we can observe the universe, in addition to electromagnetic radiation or energetic particles. LIGO has thus established an entirely new branch of astronomy, allowing us to study phenomena where signals from existing astronomical messengers are entirely lacking. The impact of this new tool seems likely to be as revolutionary as, for example, the opening up of radio astronomy and the subsequent discovery of pulsars and quasars.