The first direct observation of the gravitational waves discussed at the end here were done on 14 September 2015, and announced 5 months later, on 11 February 2016. The gravitational waves originated from a pair of merging black holes. In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish for their role in the direct detection of gravitational waves.