Latest news with #Ligo
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists measure largest ever collision of two black holes
Two black holes have collided far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way, creating the biggest merger ever recorded by gravitational wave detectors. The two phenomena, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, had been circling each other before they violently collided about 10 billion light years from Earth. Scientists at the Ligo Hanford and Livingston Observatories detected ripples in space-time from the collision just before 2pm UK time on 23 November 2023, when the two US-based detectors in Washington and Louisiana twitched at the same time. Alongside their enormous masses, the signal, dubbed GW231123 after its discovery date, also showed the black holes spinning rapidly, according to researchers. '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,' said Professor Mark Hannam, from Cardiff University and a member of the Ligo Scientific Collaboration. An artist's impression of a black hole using data from Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (Nasa/JWST) Gravitational-wave observatories have recorded around 300 black hole mergers. Prior to GW231123, the heaviest merger detected was GW190521, whose combined mass was 140 times that of the sun. The latest merger produced a black hole up to 265 times more massive than the sun. 'The black holes appear to be spinning very rapidly — near the limit allowed by Einstein's theory of general relativity,' said Dr Charlie Hoy from the University of Portsmouth. 'That makes the signal difficult to model and interpret. It's an excellent case study for pushing forward the development of our theoretical tools.' 'It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications,' said Dr Gregorio Carullo, assistant professor at the University of Birmingham. 'Despite the most likely explanation remaining a black hole merger, more complex scenarios could be the key to deciphering its unexpected features. Exciting times ahead!" Facilities like Ligo in the United States, Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan are engineered to detect the tiniest distortions in spacetime caused by violent cosmic events such as black hole mergers. The fourth observing run began in May 2023, and data through January 2024 are scheduled for release later this summer. 'This event pushes our instrumentation and data-analysis capabilities to the edge of what's currently possible,' says Dr Sophie Bini, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech. 'It's a powerful example of how much we can learn from gravitational-wave astronomy — and how much more there is to uncover.' GW231123 is set to 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, from 14 to 18 July.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists detect biggest ever merger of two massive black holes
Scientists have detected ripples in space-time from the violent collision of two massive black holes that spiralled into one another far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way. The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, began circling each other long ago and finally slammed together to form an even more massive black hole about 10bn light years from Earth. The event is the most massive black hole merger ever recorded by gravitational wave detectors and has forced physicists to rethink their models of how the enormous objects form. The signal was recorded when it hit detectors on Earth sensitive enough to detect shudders in space-time thousands of times smaller than the width of a proton. 'These are the most violent events we can observe in the universe, but when the signals reach Earth, they are the weakest phenomena we can measure,' said Prof Mark Hannam, the head of the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University. 'By the time these ripples wash up on Earth they are tiny.' Evidence for the black hole collision arrived just before 2pm UK time on 23 November 2023 when two US-based detectors in Washington and Louisiana, operated by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo), twitched at the same time. The sudden spasm in space-time caused the detectors to stretch and squeeze for one tenth of a second, a fleeting moment that captured the so-called ringdown phase as the merged black holes formed a new one that 'rang' before settling down. Analysis of the signal revealed that the colliding black holes were 103 and 137 times the mass of the sun and spinning about 400,000 times faster than Earth, close to the theoretical limit for the objects. 'These are the highest masses of black holes we've confidently measured with gravitational waves,' said Hannam, a member of the Ligo scientific collaboration. 'And they're strange, because they are slap bang in the range of masses where, because of all kinds of weird things that happen, we don't expect black holes to form.' Most black holes form when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse at the end of their life cycle. The incredibly dense objects warp space-time so much that they create an event horizon, a boundary within which even light cannot escape. Physicists at Ligo suspect the black holes that merged were themselves products of earlier mergers. That would explain how they came to be so massive and why they were spinning so fast, as merging black holes tend to impart spin on the object they create. 'We've seen hints of this before, but this is the most extreme example where that's probably what's happening,' Hannam said. Scientists have detected about 300 black hole mergers from the gravitational waves they generate. Until now, the most massive merger known produced a black hole about 140 times the mass of the sun. The latest merger produced a black hole up to 265 times more massive than the sun. Details are to be presented on Monday at the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow. Before the first gravitational wave detectors were built in the 1990s, scientists could observe the universe only through electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, infrared and radio waves. Gravitational wave observatories provide a new view of the cosmos, allowing researchers to see events that were otherwise hidden from them. 'Usually what happens in science is, when you look at the universe in a different way, you discover things you didn't expect and your whole picture is transformed,' said Hannam. 'The detectors we have planned for the next 10 to 15 years will be able to see all the black hole mergers in the universe, and maybe some surprises we didn't expect.'
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Scientists detect biggest ever merger of two massive black holes
Scientists have detected ripples in space-time from the violent collision of two massive black holes that spiralled into one another far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way. The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, began circling each other long ago and finally slammed together to form an even more massive black hole about 10bn light years from Earth. The event is the most massive black hole merger ever recorded by gravitational wave detectors and has forced physicists to rethink their models of how the enormous objects form. The signal was recorded when it hit detectors on Earth sensitive enough to detect shudders in space-time thousands of times smaller than the width of a proton. 'These are the most violent events we can observe in the universe, but when the signals reach Earth, they are the weakest phenomena we can measure,' said Prof Mark Hannam, the head of the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University. 'By the time these ripples wash up on Earth they are tiny.' Evidence for the black hole collision arrived just before 2pm UK time on 23 November 2023 when two US-based detectors in Washington and Louisiana, operated by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo), twitched at the same time. The sudden spasm in space-time caused the detectors to stretch and squeeze for one tenth of a second, a fleeting moment that captured the so-called ringdown phase as the merged black holes formed a new one that 'rang' before settling down. Analysis of the signal revealed that the colliding black holes were 103 and 137 times the mass of the sun and spinning about 400,000 times faster than Earth, close to the theoretical limit for the objects. 'These are the highest masses of black holes we've confidently measured with gravitational waves,' said Hannam, a member of the Ligo scientific collaboration. 'And they're strange, because they are slap bang in the range of masses where, because of all kinds of weird things that happen, we don't expect black holes to form.' Most black holes form when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse at the end of their life cycle. The incredibly dense objects warp space-time so much that they create an event horizon, a boundary within which even light cannot escape. Physicists at Ligo suspect the black holes that merged were themselves products of earlier mergers. That would explain how they came to be so massive and why they were spinning so fast, as merging black holes tend to impart spin on the object they create. 'We've seen hints of this before, but this is the most extreme example where that's probably what's happening,' Hannam said. Scientists have detected about 300 black hole mergers from the gravitational waves they generate. Until now, the most massive merger known produced a black hole about 140 times the mass of the sun. The latest merger produced a black hole up to 265 times more massive than the sun. Details are to be presented on Monday at the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow. Before the first gravitational wave detectors were built in the 1990s, scientists could observe the universe only through electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, infrared and radio waves. Gravitational wave observatories provide a new view of the cosmos, allowing researchers to see events that were otherwise hidden from them. 'Usually what happens in science is, when you look at the universe in a different way, you discover things you didn't expect and your whole picture is transformed,' said Hannam. 'The detectors we have planned for the next 10 to 15 years will be able to see all the black hole mergers in the universe, and maybe some surprises we didn't expect.'
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Scientists detect biggest ever merger of two massive black holes
Scientists have detected ripples in space-time from the violent collision of two massive black holes that spiralled into one another far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way. The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, began circling each other long ago and finally slammed together to form an even more massive black hole about 10bn light years from Earth. The event is the most massive black hole merger ever recorded by gravitational wave detectors and has forced physicists to rethink their models of how the enormous objects form. The signal was recorded when it hit detectors on Earth sensitive enough to detect shudders in space-time thousands of times smaller than the width of a proton. 'These are the most violent events we can observe in the universe, but when the signals reach Earth, they are the weakest phenomena we can measure,' said Prof Mark Hannam, the head of the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University. 'By the time these ripples wash up on Earth they are tiny.' Evidence for the black hole collision arrived just before 2pm UK time on 23 November 2023 when two US-based detectors in Washington and Louisiana, operated by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo), twitched at the same time. The sudden spasm in space-time caused the detectors to stretch and squeeze for one tenth of a second, a fleeting moment that captured the so-called ringdown phase as the merged black holes formed a new one that 'rang' before settling down. Analysis of the signal revealed that the colliding black holes were 103 and 137 times the mass of the sun and spinning about 400,000 times faster than Earth, close to the theoretical limit for the objects. 'These are the highest masses of black holes we've confidently measured with gravitational waves,' said Hannam, a member of the Ligo scientific collaboration. 'And they're strange, because they are slap bang in the range of masses where, because of all kinds of weird things that happen, we don't expect black holes to form.' Most black holes form when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse at the end of their life cycle. The incredibly dense objects warp space-time so much that they create an event horizon, a boundary within which even light cannot escape. Physicists at Ligo suspect the black holes that merged were themselves products of earlier mergers. That would explain how they came to be so massive and why they were spinning so fast, as merging black holes tend to impart spin on the object they create. 'We've seen hints of this before, but this is the most extreme example where that's probably what's happening,' Hannam said. Scientists have detected about 300 black hole mergers from the gravitational waves they generate. Until now, the most massive merger known produced a black hole about 140 times the mass of the sun. The latest merger produced a black hole up to 265 times more massive than the sun. Details are to be presented on Monday at the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow. Before the first gravitational wave detectors were built in the 1990s, scientists could observe the universe only through electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, infrared and radio waves. Gravitational wave observatories provide a new view of the cosmos, allowing researchers to see events that were otherwise hidden from them. 'Usually what happens in science is, when you look at the universe in a different way, you discover things you didn't expect and your whole picture is transformed,' said Hannam. 'The detectors we have planned for the next 10 to 15 years will be able to see all the black hole mergers in the universe, and maybe some surprises we didn't expect.'
GMA Network
29-06-2025
- Business
- GMA Network
Prices of Ligo, 555 sardines to be rolled back July 1
Listed food manufacturer Century Pacific Food Inc. (CPFI) will roll back prices of its sardine products under the Ligo and 555 brands starting July, as the company said it seeks to ease the burden on consumers amid economic uncertainty. CPFI said prices of its flagship brands Ligo and 555 sardines will be reduced by P1.00 per can starting Tuesday, July 1, 2025. Based on the suggested retail price (SRP) of basic necessities and prime commodities released by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in February, the 555 Bonus Pack was recorded at P19.65 for 155 grams. Canned sardine manufacturers, including CPFI, last week assured the DTI that they have canceled their plan to hike prices by P3.00, and have committed to maintain the current suggested retail price. The Canned Sardines Association of the Philippines (CSAP) earlier this month cited higher prices of imported tin sheets, resulting from the weakening peso. 'In our small way, Ligo and 555 brands want to ease the burden on consumers and support them during these times,' CPFI vice president and Sardines general manager Ronald Agoncillo said in an emailed statement released Sunday. 'Cost-effective actions, such as our continuous efforts to maximize the value chain, working with different communities, and alignment with stakeholders, allowed us to give maximum value to our customers while maintaining high product quality standards,' he added. Century Pacific earlier said it is looking to sustain the mid-teen growth in its top and bottom lines this year, with the company earmarking P3 billion for its 2025 capital spending mainly to continue the expansion of its core business. —KG, GMA Integrated News
