A detector that will form part of a 3 million km-long triangular ruler has passed ground tests
2-MIN READ2-MINZhang 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.
“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.
