The Man Who Proved Einstein Right

Kip Thorne spent decades building the sensors that finally caught gravitational waves. His work proved Einstein’s century-old prediction that space-time ripples like a pond when massive objects collide.

Thorne helped design the LIGO observatory, a massive machine capable of detecting vibrations smaller than a fraction of an atom's width. This breakthrough finally allowed us to hear the cosmic collisions of black holes across the universe. He is also famous for acting as a scientific consultant for the film Interstellar, ensuring the black hole visuals were based on real physics. It is rare to see a scientist so successfully bridge the gap between complex relativity and popular culture.