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The Irish Sun
18 hours ago
- Science
- The Irish Sun
Biggest black hole merger EVER detected has created terrifying ‘monster' that's 225 times as massive as our Sun
SCIENTISTS have discovered the biggest black hole merger e ver recorded, as two massive spacetime ripples spiral into each other. The monstrous collision occurred on the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy, and produced a black hole roughly 225 times more massive than the sun. Advertisement 3 Aerial shot of the advanced LIGO gravitational detector in Livingston, Louisiana - one of the four LVK Collaboration detectors Credit: Alamy Before now, the most massive black hole merger had a total mass of 140 suns. The new collision event, dubbed GW231123, was found by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration - a group of four detectors that identify cataclysmic cosmic events. Each black hole was roughly 100 to 140 times the mass of our Sun before they combined. "This is the most massive black hole binary we've observed through gravitational waves, and it presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation," Mark Hannam, of Cardiff University and a member of the LVK Collaboration, said in a Advertisement READ MORE ON SPACE "Black holes this massive are forbidden through standard stellar evolution models. "One possibility is that the two black holes in this binary formed through earlier mergers of smaller black holes." Evidence of the GW231123 event was discovered in late 2023, when two slight distortions in spacetime were spotted by laser detectors in Louisiana and Washington. 3 The black holes are moving so fast they are too difficult to properly analyse Credit: Alamy Advertisement The signal that arrived at the detectors was coming from two high-mass black holes that were spinning rapidly - meaning they were hard to analyse. Most read in Science Charlie Hoy, of the University of Portsmouth and also a member of the LVK, explained: "The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly - near the limit allowed by Einstein's theory of general relativity. "That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. "It's an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools." Advertisement Horrifying black hole simulation shows what 'spaghettification' looks like when objects fall into 'extreme slurp' Researchers say they need to observe more similar, high-spin mergers to better calculate just how massive this most recent black hole merger is. Gregorio Carullo, of the University of Birmingham and a member of the LVK, noted: "It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications. "Despite the most likely explanation remaining a black hole merger, more complex scenarios could be the key to deciphering its unexpected features." The researchers are set to present their findings at the Advertisement Black holes are formed through the collapse of massive stars or through the merging of smaller black holes. Known black holes currently fall into just two categories: stellar-mass black holes, which range from a few to a few dozen times the Sun's mass; and supermassive black holes, which can be anywhere from about 100,000 to 50 billion times as massive as the Sun. Intermediate-mass black holes fall into the gap of these two mass ranges and are physically unable to form from direct star collapse and are incredibly rare. Astrophysicists reckon these rare types of black holes grow from merging with others that are similar in size - like our most recent collision event. Advertisement 3 Researchers say they need to observe more similar, high-spin mergers to better calculate just how massive this most recent black hole merger is Credit: Alamy What is a black hole? The key facts Here's what you need to know... A black hole is a region of space where absolutely nothing can escape That's because they have extremely strong gravitational effects, which means once something goes into a black hole, it can't come back out They get their name because even light can't escape once it's been sucked in – which is why a black hole is completely dark What is an event horizon? There has to be a point at which you're so close to a black hole you can't escape Otherwise, literally everything in the universe would have been sucked into one The point at which you can no longer escape from a black hole's gravitational pull is called the event horizon The event horizon varies between different black holes, depending on their mass and size What is a singularity? The gravitational singularity is the very centre of a black hole It's a one-dimensional point that contains an incredibly large mass in an infinitely small space At the singularity, space-time curves infinitely, and the gravitational pull is infinitely strong Conventional laws of physics stop applying at this point How are black holes created? Most black holes are made when a supergiant star dies This happens when stars run out of fuel – like hydrogen – to burn, causing the star to collapse When this happens, gravity pulls the centre of the star inwards quickly and collapses into a tiny ball It expands and contracts until one final collapse, causing part of the star to collapse inwards thanks to gravity, and the rest of the star to explode outwards The remaining central ball is extremely dense, and if it's especially dense, you get a black hole
Scottish Sun
18 hours ago
- Science
- Scottish Sun
Biggest black hole merger EVER detected has created terrifying ‘monster' that's 225 times as massive as our Sun
Each black hole was roughly 100 to 140 times the mass of our Sun before they combined HOLE-Y SMOKES Biggest black hole merger EVER detected has created terrifying 'monster' that's 225 times as massive as our Sun Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) SCIENTISTS have discovered the biggest black hole merger ever recorded, as two massive spacetime ripples spiral into each other. The monstrous collision occurred on the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy, and produced a black hole roughly 225 times more massive than the sun. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 3 Aerial shot of the advanced LIGO gravitational detector in Livingston, Louisiana - one of the four LVK Collaboration detectors Credit: Alamy Before now, the most massive black hole merger had a total mass of 140 suns. The new collision event, dubbed GW231123, was found by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration - a group of four detectors that identify cataclysmic cosmic events. Each black hole was roughly 100 to 140 times the mass of our Sun before they combined. "This is the most massive black hole binary we've observed through gravitational waves, and it presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation," Mark Hannam, of Cardiff University and a member of the LVK Collaboration, said in a statement. "Black holes this massive are forbidden through standard stellar evolution models. "One possibility is that the two black holes in this binary formed through earlier mergers of smaller black holes." Evidence of the GW231123 event was discovered in late 2023, when two slight distortions in spacetime were spotted by laser detectors in Louisiana and Washington. 3 The black holes are moving so fast they are too difficult to properly analyse Credit: Alamy The signal that arrived at the detectors was coming from two high-mass black holes that were spinning rapidly - meaning they were hard to analyse. Charlie Hoy, of the University of Portsmouth and also a member of the LVK, explained: "The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly - near the limit allowed by Einstein's theory of general relativity. "That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. "It's an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools." Horrifying black hole simulation shows what 'spaghettification' looks like when objects fall into 'extreme slurp' Researchers say they need to observe more similar, high-spin mergers to better calculate just how massive this most recent black hole merger is. Gregorio Carullo, of the University of Birmingham and a member of the LVK, noted: "It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications. "Despite the most likely explanation remaining a black hole merger, more complex scenarios could be the key to deciphering its unexpected features." The researchers are set to present their findings at the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves in Glasgow, Scotland this week. Black holes are formed through the collapse of massive stars or through the merging of smaller black holes. Known black holes currently fall into just two categories: stellar-mass black holes, which range from a few to a few dozen times the Sun's mass; and supermassive black holes, which can be anywhere from about 100,000 to 50 billion times as massive as the Sun. Intermediate-mass black holes fall into the gap of these two mass ranges and are physically unable to form from direct star collapse and are incredibly rare. Astrophysicists reckon these rare types of black holes grow from merging with others that are similar in size - like our most recent collision event. 3 Researchers say they need to observe more similar, high-spin mergers to better calculate just how massive this most recent black hole merger is Credit: Alamy
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists detect most massive black hole merger ever — and it birthed a monster 225 times as massive as the sun
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists have detected the biggest black hole merger ever known — a gigantic collision from two massive space-time ruptures spiraling into each other — and it could hold evidence of the most elusive type of black hole in the universe. The merger, which happened on the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy, produced a black hole roughly 225 times more massive than the sun. That's nearly double the previous record holder, which spawned a final black hole with a mass of around 142 suns. The new collision was found by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration, a group of four detectors that identify cataclysmic cosmic events from the gravitational waves that spill out in their wakes. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time, first predicted to exist by Albert Einstein and confirmed by LIGO in 2015. For their groundbreaking discovery, physicists involved with the research earned a Nobel Prize in 2017. But most intriguing to the scientists are the two black holes' masses: approximately 100 and 140 times that of the sun. As was the case with the previous detection, black holes of these sizes fall into a "mass gap" that challenge conventional wisdom on how the space-time ruptures form. The researchers will present their findings July 14 to 18 at the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves in Glasgow, Scotland. "We expect most black holes to form when stars die — if the star is massive enough, it collapses to a black hole," Mark Hannam, a physics professor at Cardiff University in Wales and a member of the LVK Collaboration, told Live Science. "But for really massive stars, our theories say that the collapse is unstable, and most of the mass is blasted away in supernova explosions, and a black hole cannot form." "We don't expect black holes to form between about 60 and 130 times the mass of the sun," he added. "In this observation, the black holes appear to lie in that mass range." Related: Europe approves LISA, a next-generation space mission that will discover the faintest ripples in space-time Black holes are born from the collapse of giant stars and grow by gorging on gas, dust, stars and other black holes. Currently, known black holes fall into two categories: stellar-mass black holes, which range from a few to a few dozen times the sun's mass; and supermassive black holes, which can be anywhere from about 100,000 to 50 billion times as massive as the sun. Yet those that fall into the gap of these two mass ranges, known as intermediate-mass black holes, are physically unable to form from direct star collapses and thus remain incredibly rare. Hints of their existence have nonetheless been found, leading astrophysicists to postulate that these black holes grow from merging with others that are similar in size. Evidence for this merger arrived on Nov. 23, 2023, when two minuscule distortions in space-time passed through the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory's (LIGO) detectors in Louisiana and Washington. The two detectors — each with two L-shaped 2.5-mile-long (4 kilometers) arms containing two identical laser beams — are designed so that if a gravitational wave passes through Earth, the laser light in one arm of the detector will get compressed while the other expands, creating a tiny change in relative path lengths of the beams. The signal that arrived at the detectors was complex, coming from two high-mass black holes that were spinning rapidly. Astronomers typically analyze black hole mergers by modeling signals from different types of black hole binary systems, before matching them to any new signal they see. But for this technique to work, the models have to be precise, and Einstein's equations are harder to solve (and therefore less accurate) when the black holes are spinning quickly. Related stories —To hunt gravitational waves, scientists had to create the quietest spot on Earth —One of the world's largest lasers could be used to detect alien warp drives —Physicists want to use gravitational waves to 'see' the beginning of time "The black holes in GW231123 appear to be highly spinning, and our different models give different results," Hannam said. "That means that although we're sure that the black holes are very massive, we don't measure the masses especially accurately. For example, the possible masses for the smaller black hole span the entire mass gap." For scientists to get better calculations of these masses, these models will have to be refined, which will likely require more observations of similar high-spin mergers. Such detections would be likely; the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA gravitational wave detectors have spotted 300 mergers since the start of the first run in 2015, with 200 being found in the fourth run alone. Yet LIGO, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, is facing Trump administration budget cuts that could shut down one detector, making current detections "near-impossible," according to the facility's director, David Reitze.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Science
- Indian Express
Scientists detect signals of biggest black hole merger
An international network of gravitational wave observatories has reported the detection of the merger of two black holes that are the biggest that have ever been observed in this kind of an event. Two black holes, one of them 140 times more massive than the Sun, and the other 100 times bigger, merged to result a black hole estimated to be about 225 times the size of the Sun. The detection of the gravitational waves from this event, which actually occurred billions of years ago, was made by the LVK network of observatories, involving the LIGO detector in the United States, Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan. LIGO, which stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, is a set of two detectors in the United States that was the first one to detect gravitational waves in 2015. That discovery gave the first experimental validation of the existence of gravitational waves, which had theoretically been proposed in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity 100 years ago. It had resulted in a Nobel Prize two years later. The global gravitation wave detection network has since then expanded to Virgo observatory in Italy and KAGRA (Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) in Japan. India is in the process of building the third detector of LIGO, which will be known as LIGO-India. Indian scientists from 17 different institutions are already part of network. The study of gravitational waves provide scientists a new tool to understand the workings of the universe, which was unavailable ten years ago. The LVK network has so far detected hundreds of events in the past that produced gravitational waves, most of them involving mergers of two black holes. The latest discovery, given the name GW231123, is exceptional because it involves the biggest black holes to have been observed in any such event. 'Typical black holes from stellar collapse are under 60 solar masses and hence intermediate-mass black holes like those detected in GW231123 (100-120 solar masses) are hard to explain,' Prof Archana Pai from the Department of Physics, IIT Bombay and principal investigator of the LIGO-India Scientific Collaboration, told The Indian Express. She said scientists believe that more massive black holes are formed via a hierarchy of mergers of smaller black holes. 'Such a hierarchy might be responsible for the formation of a supermassive black hole, the engine of any spiral galaxy,' she added. According to an official statement issued on Monday, the two black holes that merged were a colossal 100 and 140 times the mass of the Sun. In addition to being extremely massive, they were also spinning incredibly fast, making this a uniquely challenging signal to interpret and suggesting the possibility of a complex formation history. 'One of the detection algorithms used for the detection was developed by the IIT Bombay group in collaboration with the LVK. IIT Bombay alumnus Koustav Chandra (now in the United States) significantly contributed to the analysis and interpretation of the event,' Pai said. Mark Hannam, a professor at Cardiff University and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration said, in a statement that the detection of GW231123 event presented a challenge to the current understanding of black hole formation. 'Black holes this massive are forbidden within our current understanding of the formation of these objects from the evolution of massive stars. One possibility is that the two black holes in this binary formed through earlier mergers of smaller black holes,' he said. Scientists said the discovery has important implications for understanding the astrophysical environment that black holes are found in, whether black holes are more likely to collide, or whether the orbits of black holes are more elongated than spherical. Alternative scenarios could also arise, opening up new directions in theories of gravity, astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, or cosmic strings. Researchers are continuing to refine their analysis and improve the models used to interpret such extreme events. GW231123 will be presented at the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, held jointly as the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow, UK, from July 14-18, 2025. According to Koustav Chandra who wrote the main part of the paper about the searches and also helped write the summary of the science results, 'This signal, just a tenth of a second long, was a real puzzle at first. Yet it matched the waveform of merging black holes, just as Einstein's general relativity predicts. We realised that we may have, for the first time, witnessed the collision of two intermediate-mass black holes. But uncovering its true origin and extracting all the science out of it will take years and will help us advance our theoretical tools in the process,' he said. Anuradha Mascarenhas is a journalist with The Indian Express and is based in Pune. A senior editor, Anuradha writes on health, research developments in the field of science and environment and takes keen interest in covering women's issues. With a career spanning over 25 years, Anuradha has also led teams and often coordinated the edition. ... Read More
Time of India
a day ago
- Science
- Time of India
India helps detect: Biggest black hole crash; signal found, 240 times heavier than sun
PUNE: A team of scientists has detected the largest black hole collision ever observed - two massive black holes crashed into each other to create a colossal, 'binary' black hole 240 times the size of the Sun. Indian scientists - Archana Pai, Koustav Chandra and a team led by M K Haris - played a central role in the landmark discovery of this event, dubbed 'GW231123'. The discovery was announced on Monday by the global LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) network - an international team of scientists whose mission is to detect tiny ripples in spacetime triggered by powerful cosmic events, such as black hole collisions. You Can Also Check: Pune AQI | Weather in Pune | Bank Holidays in Pune | Public Holidays in Pune LVK comprises three gravitational-wave detectors - LIGO in the United States, Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan. GR231123 was discovered by LIGO Hanford in Richmond (Washington) and LIGO Livingston (Los Angeles) on Nov 23, 2023. The event involved two massive black holes, one measuring 103 times the mass of the Sun and the other, 137 solar masses. The result was a binary black hole the mass of which is 240 times that of the Sun. Furthermore, Pai, principal investigator of the LIGO-India Scientific Collaboration (LISC), said black holes were spinning at a rate six lakh times faster than the earth's rotation. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Is it legal? How to get Internet without paying a subscription? Techno Mag Learn More Undo "GW231123 is the heaviest and highly spinning binary black hole system detected to date," she said. Black holes this large and fast-spinning aren't supposed to exist - at least not according to our current understanding of how stars evolve. Chandra, who completed his PhD at IIT Bombay and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University, helped study and make sense of the GW231123 signal, wrote up the findings, and figured out what the final part of the signal tells us after the black holes merged. He also helped write the main scientific paper. Haris and his team from IIT Calicut checked if the signal behaved exactly as Einstein's theory of gravity predicted - and so far, it seems to match. "This signal, just a tenth of a second long, was a real puzzle at first," Chandra said. It matched the waveform of emerging black holes, as predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. "We realised that we may have, for the first time, witnessed the collision of two intermediate-mass black holes. Chandra said it could be years before scientists are able to uncover the true origin of the gravitational wave and extracting all data from it. India participates in global gravitational wave astronomy via LISC, which currently comprises 17 academic institutions across India. IIT Bombay specialises in short-duration transient searches, including intermediate-mass black holes in the LIGO-Virgo data.
