Resolution criteria

This market will resolve to YES if, on or before December 31, 2030, at 11:59 PM UTC, a major pulsar timing array (PTA) collaboration—such as NANOGrav, EPTA, PPTA, InPTA, CPTA, or the overarching International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA)—publishes a peer-reviewed paper or releases an official announcement declaring the confirmed detection of cosmic strings (or cosmic superstrings).

To qualify as a "detection" for a YES resolution:

• The publication or announcement must explicitly claim a discovery or detection of cosmic strings, rather than merely stating that they are "not ruled out," "consistent with" the data, or "highly constrained".

• The signal must be attributed to cosmic strings—either via a stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) component definitively associated with cosmic string networks, or through individual gravitational-wave bursts (such as from cosmic string cusps or kinks).

• The statistical significance of the detection must meet the scientific collaboration's threshold for a formal claim of detection/discovery (typically a $5\sigma$ significance or a decisive Bayes factor over alternative hypotheses like supermassive black hole binaries) as stated in the official announcement.

If, by the deadline, no major PTA collaboration has announced a confirmed detection of cosmic strings, or if the observed signals continue to be reported as ambiguous, or primarily explained by supermassive black hole binaries with cosmic strings only remaining a theoretical alternative, the market will resolve to NO.

Background

Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) monitor arrays of stable millisecond pulsars across the Milky Way to detect tiny distortions in spacetime caused by low-frequency, nanohertz-scale gravitational waves. In June 2023, global PTA collaborations announced the first compelling evidence of a stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB).

While the scientific community widely suspects the primary source of this cosmic hum to be thousands of merging supermassive black hole binaries, cosmological sources from the early universe are also active candidates. Among these, cosmic strings—hypothetical one-dimensional topological defects left over from symmetry-breaking phase transitions in the early universe—are predicted to continuously radiate gravitational waves as their loops decay and wiggle. As datasets grow and sensitivities improve, researchers are actively analyzing PTA data for the distinct spectral signatures or localized bursts that would confirm the existence of these primordial strings.

This description was generated by AI.