A big step forward for optical core of China’s Taiji gravitational wave project

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May 11, 2026 #Beijing, #Chinese Academy of Sciences, #Chinese scientists, #Earth, #European Space Agency, #gravitational wave antennas, #gravitational waves, #Huairou campus, #Institute of Mechanics, #Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, #Lisa, #Science and Technology Daily, #South China Morning Post (SCMP), #Taiji, #Tianqin project, #United States

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A big step forward for optical core of China’s Taiji gravitational wave project

A detector that will form part of a 3 million km-long triangular ruler has passed ground tests

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The Taiji system will look for gravitational waves formed by the collisions of massive objects such as black holes. Illustration: Shutterstock

Zhang Tongin BeijingPublished: 12:00pm, 11 May 2026In the sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem, humans build “gravitational wave antennas” to broadcast to the cosmos.

Now, Chinese scientists have made a step forward in turning that idea into hardware – only in reverse.

Science and Technology Daily reported on Saturday that a team from the Institute of Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences had developed the optical core of a giant space detector to listen to the universe.

The detector is part of a space-based gravitational wave project called Taiji that is designed to pick up gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of space and time.

These waves are created when really massive objects – like black holes – smash into each other, and detecting them could offer insight into the earliest moments of the universe.Advertisement

“The ground tests [of the optical core] were a success, and all the key numbers met the strict demands of the mission. That means that the core measurement system of Taiji has officially moved from [theory] to real hardware,” the report said.

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