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Chinese scientist duo recognised for role in search for ripples in space-time
Liu Kuo and Chen Siyuan were part of multinational group that won Royal Astronomical Society award for work on nanohertz gravitational waves
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Ling Xinin Ohio
Chinese researchers have received a prestigious award from the Royal Astronomical Society for their leading roles in efforts to detect nanohertz gravitational waves – or ultra-low-frequency ripples in space-time.
Liu Kuo and Chen Siyuan from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) were key contributors to the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) consortium, which received the society’s group achievement award earlier this month.
While working at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, Liu led a team of researchers from Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and other European nations to analyse and release a major pulsar timing data set in 2023, according to the SHAO.
The data, measured to within a billionth of a second, was built on 25 years of observations from six of the world’s most sensitive radio telescopes. Pulsars – rapidly spinning neutron stars – serve as cosmic clocks to reveal the elusive waves through tiny variations in their timing.
Using this data set, Chen led a team in France at the National Centre for Scientific Research and the Paris Observatory to search for a faint, collective signal from pairs of distant supermassive black holes.
His team successfully identified a signal with a statistical significance of about three sigma, meaning it was unlikely to be noise. The findings matched results from other pulsar timing collaborations, SHAO said on its WeChat account.
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