Amazing Science

Ready to open the universe' huge blind box?! FAST's finding about nanohertz gravitational waves

2023-06-29 By

Using FAST (the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) with incredibly high sensitivity, Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) collaboration conducted a long-term systematic monitoring of 57 millisecond pulsars and discovered evidence of nanohertz gravitational waves with a 4.6 sigma statistical confidence level (false positive rate less than two in a million). The short data length (3 years and 5 months) prevents the CPTA team from determining the physical origin of the current signal at the moment, but with future observations, more mysteries of the universe will be unveiled.