The most massive gravitational-wave source yet has been detected – a binary black hole merger which produced a blast equal to the energy of eight suns, sending shockwaves through the universe.
The most massive gravitational-wave source yet has been detected – a binary black hole merger which produced a blast equal to the energy of eight suns, sending shockwaves through the universe.
Gravitational waves are produced when an extreme cosmic event occurs somewhere in the universe and, like dropping a rock in a pond, these events ripple across the cosmos, bending and stretching the fabric of space-time itself.
Since gravitational waves were first detected in 2015, from the merger of two black holes more than a billion light years distant, astronomers have witnessed a slew of signals from different cosmic collisions. Together these events have opened an entirely new window on the universe that offers a unique and powerful probe of the most extreme cosmic phenomena.
Based on how we understand the internal workings of stars, scientists believed that a black hole of this mass could not be formed by a collapsing star. So now, with firm evidence that such massive black holes do exist, astronomers need to rethink what is known about how black holes form.
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