The scientists and engineers who made the first-ever are now $3 million richer.

In February, researchers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project announced that their detectors had recorded  — ripples in the fabric of space-time whose existence was predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 in his theory of general relativity. These ripples were generated by the faraway merger of two black holes, each of which harbored about 30 times the mass of the sun, LIGO team members said.

News of the find spread quickly around the world, thrilling scientists and laypeople alike. And now it has netted the discovery team a cool $3 million, in the form of a special award from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.