National Taiwan University (NTU) has announced that professor Chen Pi-sin (陳丕燊) has been named a Blaise Pascal Chair for his research into simulated black holes.
Chen, who is director of the Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics at the university, said the chair would enable him to continue his research into black holes.
He has over the past year worked with Nobel Prize in Physics laureate Gerard Mouru on an experiment both had proposed in the paper “Accelerating Plasma Mirrors to Investigate the Black Hole Information Loss Paradox,” published by Physical Review Letters in January last year.
Photo courtesy of National Taiwan University
The two are exploring what is known to as the black hole information paradox, namely whether physical information would continue to exist when it is devoured by a black hole.
The premise of the experiment hypothesized that Albert Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity could be paradoxical with quantum mechanics, Chen said.
“With the use of lasers, plasma targets with density gradients and relativistic plasma mirrors, we have created an environment analogous to the late-time evolution of black hole Hawking radiation,” Chen said.
Chen is to be invited to conduct further experiments at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where he would have access to the Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, the university said.
The Blaise Pascal Chair, named after one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator, was conceived in 1996 by the government of the Ile de France region, which surrounds Paris, to invite prestigious academics to visit and study.
The laureate of the Blaise Pascal Chair is considered an extremely prestigious position.
Of more than 90 chair recipients over the years, five have been Nobel Prize winners.
Nominees are chosen every year by a scientific committee from outstanding scientists around the world in a wide range of disciplines.
Additional reporting by CNA
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods