Stockholm: US astrophysicists Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Physics Prize for their discovery of gravitational waves, the Nobel jury said today.   

Predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity but only first detected in 2015, gravitational waves are 'ripples' in the fabric of space-time caused by violent processes in the Universe, such as colliding black holes or the collapse of stellar cores.  

"Their discovery shook the world," said Goran K Hansson, the head of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences.

Three American physicists have won the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago. 

Rainer Weiss has been awarded one half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£825,000) prize, announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm today. Kip Thorne and Barry Barish will share the other half of the prize. 

All three scientists have played a leading role in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or Ligo, experiment, which made the first historic observation of gravitational waves in September 2015. 

Weiss, emeritus professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an experimentalist and made a major contribution to the concept, design, funding and eventual construction of Ligo.