CAS has announced the research program “Taiji” that will study gravitational waves from the merging of binary black holes and other celestial bodies.
Unlike the LIGO research conducted from a ground-based observatory, Taiji will conduct space-based detection on the gravitational waves with lower frequencies to observe celestial bodies with greater mass or located farther away in the universe, said Wu Yueliang, chief scientist of the Taiji program and an academician of CAS.
However, the gravitational wave signals from those celestial bodies are extremely weak, posing great challenges for detection. Scientists need to break through the limit of current precise measurement and control technology, Wu said.