In a 10-square-meter office at Building 3, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS), UCAS in Zhuantang, Xihu District, Liu Jing deals with black holes, gravitational waves and dark matter every day. Here he explores galaxies millions of light-years away, thinks about the universe tens of billions of years ago, and lets his imagination run wild to push himself.
From Hengshui City, Hebei Province, this postdoctoral fellow is a theoretical physicist born in the 1990s, and is engaged in similar work as Sheldon in the American TV seriesThe Big Bang Theory. Since September 2020, he has been studying with Academician Cai Ronggen at the postdoctoral workstation of HIAS, UCAS. Devoted to the physical processes of the early universe, he has made the voice of young Chinese scholars in the international physics community.
01 Doctor of Physics Says He's Not Good at Physics
You might think that studying the universe is all about sitting next to a telescope every day. But in fact, Liu Jing's work mode is not much different from ours. He also looks at the laptop computer, browsing websites, doing calculations and writing articles. Only, he studies the physical processes before and at the very beginning of the Big Bang.
The study of the early universe is inseparable from a buzzword in physics in recent years-gravitational waves. Liu Jing told the reporter that gravitational waves are space-time fluctuations influenced by gravity, which dissipate little energy as they travel through the universe. Therefore, gravitational waves born in the early universe, even through millions of years of time and stars, still preserve the universe information at that time, which is important for understanding the evolution of the universe.
Liu Jing's academic research is usually measured in tens of billions of years and millions of light years. So what is the significance of studying such distant and grand academic propositions? "Knowing where we came from guide us where to go, and that's the great significance of studying the early universe," Liu Jing said. Practical application of gravitational waves may be a long way off, but in reality, a study can do much more than advance a certain discipline. In many cases, the research methods used in the research process are more likely to be applied to life.
Even if there may be no substantive research breakthrough in his entire academic career, Liu Jing will not stop exploring. "It's always attractive to do something that no one else has done yet." Recently, he has been working on black holes. "Black holes are very dense objects, similar to the early universe. And they are the key to know the physics in extreme cases."
He was recommended to the University of Science and Technology of China during the college entrance examination and completed his master's and doctoral studies in just 5 years. Interestingly, this outstanding student in physics admitted that he was not good at physics in high school. "I like physics just because there is nothing to memorize and the test questions are more interesting," he said.
02 Hangzhou Has "Gravitational Waves" That Attract Talent
Cosmology is a lonely discipline in China as there are fewer than 100 scholars like Liu Jing who are engaged in early universe research. But he did not feel alone at HIAS.
"When I see an interesting article, I'll go to my colleagues and discuss it with them." Liu Jing enjoys such an academic atmosphere a lot. "We often discuss from 4:00 pm to 11:00 pm without dinner. My colleagues are all top minds in different research fields, and I get a lot of inspiration from our conversations."
As a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences system, HIAS has gathered 12 academicians from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 196 double-employed professors, 93 outstanding young scientists and talent at the same level since its settlement in Hangzhou in June 2019. Also, through projects such as the Taiji Program in Space, it has attracted more and more scientific and technological innovators to Hangzhou.
In addition to the multi-disciplinary research atmosphere, HIAS also provides a comprehensive approach to talent cultivation, especially the unique Professor Lab System. Each postdoctoral fellow will enjoy "group guidance" from several supervisors in the professor's lab composed of a chief professor, two young scholars, and a cultivated talent.
HIAS also provides living guarantees for postdocs like Liu Jing, including well-decorated apartments and adequate funding for experiments. In addition, according to the "Postdoctoral Multiplication Program" issued by Hangzhou in 2019, the staff who joined postdoctoral workstations in Hangzhou to engage in full-time research after June 3, 2019 (inclusive) can enjoy a living subsidy of RMB 120,000 person/year.
[Profile]
Liu Jing was born in 1992. His research interests are the physical processes of the early universe and their observable effects, including stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds and primary black holes. Under the guidance of his supervisor, Liu Jing published a paper in the internationally renowned physics journal Phys. Rev. Lett. this year. This paper proposes a new mechanism for generating strong anisotropic stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds.
Editor: Liu Jinyang
