In honor of the LIGO detection of gravitational waves
This puzzle explicitly recognizes the original “troika” who founded the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Many people thought the trio might be awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, but the deadline for nominations had passed a couple of weeks before the first detection of gravitational waves was publicly announced. One of the three died in March 2017 , so he was ineligible to share this year’s Nobel Prize. On 3 October 2017, the surviving troika members, along with Barry Barish (who does not figure in the puzzle), were honored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
(Article thumbnail image credit: Nobel Media AB 2017, by Pi Frisk)
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