CANBERRA, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Four Australian scientists who were part of an international team that detected gravitational waves have won the country's top science prize.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently awarded Susan Scott and David McClelland of Australian National University (ANU), David Blair of the University of Western Australia (UWA) and Peter Veitch from the University of Adelaide with the PM's Prize for Science for 2020.
The four were part of an international team that detected gravitational waves, ripples in space and time first proposed by Albert Einstein 100 years ago, in 2015.
"This year more than ever we have turned to our scientists in the face of one of our biggest challenges in recent memory, the COVID-19 pandemic," Morrison said in a statement on Wednesday night.
Practical applications of scientific breakthroughs will continue to play a vital role in ensuring that science, innovation and education are key components of Australia's economic future, said the prime minister.
Susan Scott, the first woman to receive the prize for an achievement in physics, spent about 25 years searching for gravitational waves.
"That detection involved two black holes colliding and the two amazing projections from Einstein's theory are black holes and gravitational waves and they came together in that one event," she said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
"It's like the most magical story in science." Enditem