Dr Chan Man-ho, Assistant Professor at the Department of Science and Environmental Studies, has gained an Honorable Mention from the Gravity Research Foundation in USA for his entry in a prestigious international competition highly regarded by physicists worldwide, namely "Awards for Essays on Gravitation 2019".

Entitled “Can the Emergent Gravity Challenge the Standard Particle Dark Matter Paradigm?” Dr Chan’s award-winning essay discusses and tests one of the most popular versions of modified gravity, the Emergent Gravity. It showed that the Emergent Gravity theory can simultaneously explain the tight correlations in galaxies and galaxy clusters, which suggests that it is a good theory to challenge the standard particle dark matter paradigm in astrophysics.

Now in its 70th year, the annual competition recognises papers describing the authors' original research in the fields of general relativity and quantum gravity. Each year, the five best essays are selected as winning works and several outstanding essays are given an Honorable Mention. The awarded essays are published in a special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D.

Winners of previous competitions included the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, the 1999 Physics Nobel laureate Gerard't Hooft and the 2006 Physics Nobel laureate George Smoot.