LIGO detects gravitational waves from biggest merging black holes yet
LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA picked up a wild cosmic event: two massive black holes collided about 2 billion lightyears away, creating a new black hole that's around 225 times heavier than our Sun—the biggest one we've seen from a merger so far.
Discovery challenges existing theories about black hole formation
One of the black holes was in a "no-go" mass range (the pair instability gap) where scientists didn't expect to find any.
This shakes up what we thought we knew about how black holes form and could mean there are more surprises out there in deep space.
Collision happened very fast, making it tricky to interpret data
The collision happened super fast, and both black holes were spinning close to their top speeds—making it tricky for researchers to model and interpret the gravitational waves.
Still, LIGO's laser tech managed to pick up these ripples in spacetime.
Discovery could change how we think about these mysterious objects
This discovery hints that some giant black holes might be built from earlier mergers, not just dying stars.
It challenges old ideas and could change how we think about the life stories of these mysterious objects.