Penn State physicists Eugenio Bianchi, Anuradha Gupta, and B.S. Sathyaprakash took second place for their work, “Quantum gravity and black hole spin in gravitational wave observations: a test of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy” for the 2019 Buchalter Cosmology Prize.

This annual award rewards new discoveries that have the potential to produce an advance in the evolution, structure, and origin of the universe.

Buchalter created the prize inspired by his own research and experience in cosmology and the belief that significant breakthroughs in the field of cosmology still lie ahead.

“The 2019 prize winners represent bold thinking that can help open up new frontiers in our understanding of physics and of the universe,” Buchalter said.

Bianchi, Gupta, and Sathyaprakash were recognized as “a remarkable test of the thermodynamic character of black holes, predicting the spin characteristics of an initial primordial population of black holes that thermalize in the early universe, and which could be detectable by current and near-future gravitational wave detectors.”