Scientists discover the most massive crash of two black holes, each bigger than 100 Suns
The discovery includes two black holes, whose size is more massive than 100 suns, crashing into one another in a collision that sent ripples through the fabric of space-time.
In fact, the mass and spin of the black holes don't match what current models predict. This has given rise to new questions and possibilities about the life and growth of these cosmic powerhouses.
The largest recorded black hole merger is a massive event named GW231123. Detected by the LIGO observatories in the US, along with partner detectors Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, this event involved two massive black holes, weighing roughly 100 and 140 times the mass of the sun. When they collided, they sent faint ripples through space-time called
gravitational waves
, a phenomenon first predicted by Einstein in 1915.
'These amazing detectors are really the most sensitive measuring instruments that human beings have ever built,' said Mark Hannam, head of the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. 'We're observing the most violent and extreme events in the universe through the smallest measurements we can make.'
Something that sets this event apart is the size and speed of the black holes involved.
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'The individual black holes are special because they lie in a range of masses where we do not expect them to be produced from dying stars,' said Charlie Hoy, research fellow at the University of Plymouth and also part of the LIGO collaboration.
This unusual mass range is known as the 'mass gap', meaning a theoretical range between about 60 and 130 solar masses where traditional star death isn't expected to create black holes.
According to Hannam, 'There's a range of masses where we think that it's not possible for black holes to form that way. And the black holes from GW231123 live bang in the middle of that gap.'
To explain this, researchers believe these black holes may be the result of earlier black hole mergers, which could essentially be a cosmic chain reaction. 'You can have this process where you just build up more and more massive black holes,' Hannam explained.
Supporting this theory is the fact that the black holes appeared to be spinning near their physical limits. 'So far, most black holes we have found with gravitational waves have been spinning fairly slowly,' Hoy noted. 'This suggests that GW231123 may have formed through a different mechanism… or it could be a sign that our models need to change.'
'This new merger is very hard to explain in other ways,' said Zoltan Haiman, professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, suggesting that these may be remnants of multiple generations of black hole mergers.
Going ahead, future detections could reveal whether this record-breaking collision was a rare one-off or a clue to a much larger population of heavyweight black holes hiding in the universe.
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