Gravitational wave scientists win $3m Special Breakthrough Prize

Following their February breakthrough, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Ronald Drever and nearly 1,000 LIGO scientists will share the Silicon Valley-backed prize

Mere months after they declared the discovery of gravitational waves, more than 1,000 physicists have been handed good reason to put their party hats back on and return to the champagne.

The February observation of ripples in the fabric of spacetime, first postulated by Albert Einstein a century ago, has landed the researchers $3m (2.04m) in the shape of a prize backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.