22 November 2016
Astrophysicist Zhang Shuangnan is in charge of two important projects: a probe on Tiangong II, China's latest space lab, to detect the polarization of bursts of gamma rays; and a space telescope, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope, which is scheduled for launch soon. The discovery of a special type of "violent-tempered" black hole in the Milky Way owes a huge debt to medical science, but it was Zhang who made thecross-disciplinary discovery. He undertook post-doctoral research in the United States, and studied the process by which medical images are obtained. Later, when he worked for NASA in 1992, he used medical imaging software to deal with astronomical observation data.
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