The Nobel Physics Prize 2017 has been awarded to three scientists for their discoveries in gravitational waves.

The scientists are Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne have won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. 

They are members of the LIGO-Virgo detector collaboration that discovered gravitational waves. The prize was awarded "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves," the committee said in a news release.

“This year’s prize is about a discovery that shook the world," said the Nobel committee representative during a conference in Stockholm on Tuesday (Oct 3).

The Nobel committee has awarded a prize in physics 111 times since 1901. Last year, three researchers won for their work in the field of topology. Topology, as The Washington Post reported, is the study of state changes more intricate than the pivot from liquid to solid. The 2016 laureates discovered exotic transformations that turn matter into superconductors or frictionless liquids, able to swirl in a never-slowing vortex.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in physics join a rarefied group that counts Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Niels Bohr as members. More recent laureates include University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who won the 2010 prize. They performed groundbreaking experiments with graphene, a lattice of carbon a single atom thick. 

In 2013, François Englert and Peter Higgs won for predicting a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, the existence of which was confirmed by the Large Hadron Collider in 2012.

BDST: 1630 HRS, OCT 3, 2017
AP