Discovery of mysterious radio waves from deep space earns trio honour
Three astrophysicists are among the winners of the prestigious Shaw Prize this year for discovering mysterious milli-second-long giant pulses of radio waves that often come from far off in space.
Australian Matthew Bailes and Americans Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin received the Shaw Prize for Astronomy for being the first to detect fast radio bursts (FRBs) in 2007 using data from the Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.
The winners will receive an equal share of the US$1.2 million prize for the astronomy category, the organisers said.
The awards were established in 2002 by the late entertainment mogul, Run Run Shaw, to honour individuals’ outstanding contributions in their fields.
Recipients of the prize in all three categories, astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences, will be invited to a ceremony in Hong Kong on November 12 – the first time in three years the event will take place in person because it moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Awardees from 2020 to 2022 will also be invited.
The astrophysicists’ initial research indicated that many of the intense waves had come from distant galaxies. Their sources were likely to be tiny – comparable with the breadth of cities on Earth – despite being extremely dense and containing huge amounts of energy.
The origins of FRBs remain unknown, although scientists strongly believe they are associated with neutron stars, remnants of collapsed stars after a supernova explosion.
“Despite initial scepticism in the astronomical research community, by now over a thousand similar FRBs have been discovered, and the number of discoveries is growing rapidly, and new telescopes designed specifically to look for FRBs have come along the line,” said Professor Scott Tremaine, chairman of the prize’s astronomy selection committee, on the impact of the scientists’ work.
Tremaine added further understanding of FRBs could help scientists probe issues in fundamental physics, including the expansion rate of the universe and discovering possible new forms of exotic matter.
In other categories, German chemist Patrick Cramer and Spanish-American biophysicist Eva Nogales were the joint recipients of the life science and medicine prize.
They are credited with pioneering approaches which allow scientists to visualise, at the level of individual atoms, the protein machines responsible for gene transcription – a fundamental process in life.
“They revealed the importance of proper gene transcription to promote health and prevent diseases,” said Bonnie Bassler of the Shaw Prize’s selection committee in life science and medicine.
Vladimir Drinfeld and Shing-Tung Yau won the prize for mathematical sciences for their contributions to mathematical physics, arithmetic geometry, differential geometry and Kahler geometry.