Latest news with #CardiffUniversity
Yahoo
6 hours 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
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists record a black hole collision they weren't sure was possible
A pair of newly-discovered record-breaking black holes has scientists simultaneously popping the champagne and scratching their heads. The massive duo are the largest ever recorded at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which was built to detect ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by the collisions of massive objects. These enormous outliers are challenging theorists to figure out just how they grew to such titanic sizes. 'We don't think black holes form between about 60 and 130 times the mass of the sun, and these two seem to be pretty much slap bang in the middle of that range,' says Mark Hannam, a physicist at Cardiff University in the UK and a LIGO team member. Your normal everyday black hole is thought to be born during the death of a giant star, when the star's weighty core collapses down into an infinitesimal point with such strong gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape it. But the physics of this process gets wonky for especially huge stars. Once their cores weight more than around 60 solar masses, the collapse becomes so violent that the entire star is blown to smithereens, leaving nothing, not even a black hole, behind. Yet LIGO is now spotting more and more black holes within this 'forbidden' zone, including the newest behemoths. They are thought to be 103 and 137 times the sun's mass, according to a paper posted July 13 to but each has enough uncertainty in their measured properties that they could both be inside the prohibited range. When they met and merged out in the deep dark universe billions of years ago, they created an even larger monster tipping the scales at between 190 and 265 solar masses, the most massive beast LIGO has ever seen. As the observatory captures gravitational waves from more such events, researchers will be able to tease apart the mystery of their creation and perhaps learn whether they have a connection to the astoundingly huge black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies. Black holes were thought to come in two flavors. This discovery is a strange third For a long time, black holes were known to come in just two versions—approximately sun-sized and galactic. Most of the roughly 300 black holes LIGO has detected so far fit into the first category: They are between a few and several tens of times the sun's mass and are believed to have formed after a gargantuan star exploded as a supernova, leaving behind a dense remnant that inexorably sucks in anything that gets too close. The second version is a much more gargantuan beast. Telescopes have spotted black holes in the centers of nearly every galaxy; gravitational monstrosities weighing 100 million solar masses or more that appear to regulate star formation within these galaxies. Nobody is quite sure how these immense devourers got so big. Did they start out as sun-scale black holes and then somehow grow to extreme size? Or was there another story behind their creation? The existence of black holes in the intermediate range—somewhere between 100 and 100,000 times the sun's mass—would help bridge this gap and perhaps help explain whether small black holes were turning into larger ones. But, until recently, physicists had never seen one. To great fanfare in 2020, LIGO researchers announced that they'd found a black hole duo with masses 66 and 85 times that of the sun, whose smash-up produced a giant with around 150 solar masses. The finding for the first time showed that black holes could cross into this threshold of intermediate mass, though theorists are still debating exactly how that happened. The problem is that when a gigantic star has a core that weights between 60 and 130 times the sun's mass, it can reach blazing temperatures nearing 300 million degrees Celsius during the end of its life. At that point, particles of light spontaneously transform into electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. These particles can no longer hold up the star's heavy outer layers, which come crashing down with such ferocity that the core is completely obliterated. No black hole, or anything else, results. Physicists have speculated about a few possibilities to explain what they're seeing with LIGO. For one, their theories of stellar evolution might be wrong and perhaps something can survive the severe core collapse of humongous stars. The other possibilities involve smaller black holes growing into larger ones via some kind of two-step process, says astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University in Connecticut. It could be either that two star-sized black holes came together and combined to form heavier behemoths or a small black hole was created and then sucked down gas and dust to balloon into a more massive beast. 'The question is: What are the cosmic environments and conditions where such things can happen?' Natarajan asks. One major clue might lie with the two new objects, which are spinning around like a top at close to the upper limit that scientists think they can spin. They have the fastest rotations of any black hole LIGO has ever seen. Some researchers have posited such spins could arise when smaller black holes meet, merge, and spin each other up. But Natarajan thinks perhaps something else is going on here. Because if the colliding black holes were spinning in opposite directions (and there's a good chance they were) the merger black hole would have produced a slower-spinning object. She favors the idea that smaller black holes were born in dense stellar clusters full of gas and dust. As that star-sized black hole bounced around inhaling material like water going down a drain, it could have grown and spun up to the extreme rotation seen in the new objects. She and her colleagues are working to calculate the exact outcome of such a feasting process in stellar clusters. Scientists aren't done searching for enormous black holes Future upgrades to the LIGO detectors will make them more sensitive, letting them uncover even more enormous black holes and measure their properties more precisely. Along with gravitational wave detectors in Europe, Japan, and eventually India, researchers will be able to pinpoint black hole events better on the night sky, allowing telescopes to scope those areas out and see if there's, for instance, a dense star cluster that might favor one formation mechanism or another. Researchers are also looking forward to instruments such as the Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope, expected to be operational in the mid-2030s or 40s, which will be able to see black hole mergers that occurred much earlier in the universe's history. Such gravitational wave observatories might be able to capture events when galaxies were first forming, potentially providing insights into how their central black holes became so gargantuan, along with better data on small and intermediate black holes. 'There's just so many black holes littered in the universe,' says Natarajan. 'The fact that we're starting to bridge these scales, I think that's super exciting.' 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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Physicists detect largest-ever merger of 2 black holes equal in size to 240 suns
Sometime in their cosmic lives, two gigantic black holes crashed into one another to form something even more monstrous: A black hole equal to the size of 240 of Earth's sun. Now, thanks to an international collaboration among physicists, cutting-edge technology managed to uncover the behemoth by detecting ripples in space-time from the violent collision. The force of the collision not only left cosmic bread crumbs for researchers to follow, but created what experts claim is the most massive black hole merger ever observed through gravitational waves, or distortions in space-time caused by such powerful events. As a result, physicists are rethinking their astrophysical models for the universe. "It presents a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation," Mark Hannam, a physicist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom who was part of the team behind the find, said in a statement. "Black holes this massive are forbidden through standard stellar evolution models. Supermassive black holes, regions of space where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light doesn't have enough energy to escape, are often considered terrors of the known universe. When any object gets close to a supermassive black hole, it's typically ensnared in a powerful gravitational pull. That's due to the event horizon – a theoretical boundary known as the "point of no return" where light and other radiation can no longer escape. As their name implies, supermassive black holes are enormous (Sagittarius A*, located at the center of our Milky Way, is 4.3 million times bigger than the sun.) They're also scarily destructive and perplexing sources of enigma for astronomers who have long sought to learn more about entities that humans can't really get anywhere near. The event, designated GW231123, was spotted Nov. 23, 2023, by the gravitational wave detector network LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK). An international team of physicists who are part of the network used detectors located in the U.S., Italy and Japan to observe the merger through gravitational waves, a cosmic phenomenon that could hold clues about the mysteries of the universe. First theorized in 1916 by Albert Einstein, gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time created during some of the universe's most powerful events, including the merging or collision of supermassive black holes. In this instance, two enormous black holes – 100 and 140 times the mass of Earth's sun – collided. The result? A black hole the size of a whopping 240 suns. That makes it the heaviest of all the previous approximate 100 black hole mergers yet confirmed through gravitational wave observations, according to the researchers. Until the discovery, the most massive black hole merger had a much smaller total mass of 140 times that of the sun. The researchers even theorized that the two black holes could have formed through earlier mergers of even smaller black holes. The discovery "marks a landmark achievement in gravitational-wave science," Amit Singh Ubhi, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham and a member of the LVK Collaboration, said in a statement. "It opens a new frontier in our understanding of black hole formation and underlines the urge to accelerate innovation towards the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors." Funded by the National Science Foundation, LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) previously made history in 2015 when it made the first-ever detection of gravitational waves. The space-time ripples were discovered by LIGO's twin detectors in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. In the years since, LIGO joined forces with gravitational wave detectors Virgo in Italy and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan. The collaboration has fueled the discovery of more than 300 black hole mergers during surveillance of the Milk Way galaxy. Researchers still have work ahead to refine the analysis of the recent black hole merger and improve stellar evolution models, Gregorio Carullo, a Birmingham professor who helped analyze the findings, said in a statement. 'It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications," Carullo said. "There are exciting times ahead.' Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Largest black hole merger ever detected through gravitational waves
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Record-Sized Collision Between Black Holes Detected by Astronomers
Two black holes have collided in a merger that could revolutionize our understanding of black hole growth. Named GW 231123 after the date it was recorded on 23 November 2023, it's the most massive black hole collision we've seen yet, resulting in an object heavier than 225 Suns. Previously, the most massive black hole collision produced an object 142 times the mass of the Sun. What makes this so incredible is that each of the black holes involved in the collision is heavier than the upper mass limit for black holes formed from a single stellar core – suggesting both may have been involved in previous collisions. Related: Astronomers Detect a 'Tsunami' of Gravitational Waves. Here's Where They're Coming From "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," says astronomer and physicist Mark Hannam of Cardiff University in the UK. "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." Gravitational wave astronomy kicked off in 2015, when the LIGO interferometer detected the faint signal from the gravitational ripples sent propagating through space-time as two extreme objects merged and became one. Since then, LIGO has been joined by the Virgo and KAGRA facilities, collecting some 300 or so signals from black hole pairs colliding across the Universe. Astronomers can analyze and tease apart the signals, using the ripples to ascertain the properties of the black holes that made them. Here's where it gets really cool: small black holes are really hard to find in space, since they emit no detectable light. By collecting data on mergers, astronomers are collecting data on the reality of black holes. Much of the research around these hyperdense objects has been, by necessity, theoretical. We know that the smaller ones (as opposed to supermassive black holes millions of Suns in mass) are the remains of massive stars that go supernova, their cores collapsing under gravity to form objects so dense, light can't escape their gravitational hold. Related: The Birth of a Black Hole Created The Brightest Space Explosion Ever Seen There is, however, an upper limit to the size of black hole this formation mechanism can produce – because above a certain weight, stars explode in what is called a pair-instability supernova that completely obliterates the core. We don't know for sure what that limit is, but it could be as low as 40 or so solar masses, and as high as 60. We've already uncovered evidence of black holes that exceed this weight limit. That 142 solar mass merger involved black holes 66 and 85 times the mass of the Sun. But GW 231123 ups the ante rather spectacularly. In addition, both of the black holes involved in the event were spinning very fast, very close to the theoretical limit, the researchers say. This complicated the signal quite a bit – but it could also be a clue about the history of the black holes. When two black holes combine, the resulting single object should have a faster spin rate, a property scientists have proposed as a tool for determining whether a black hole is the product of a previous merger. It's going to take further analysis to unravel all the complexities of GW 231123, but the event could validate scientific theories about how black holes form. It could also be a huge clue about how supermassive black holes grow, since we don't know how they get from objects comparable in mass to a star to the giant behemoths around which entire galaxies whirl. "It will take years for the community to fully unravel this intricate signal pattern and all its implications," says physicist Gregorio Carullo of the University of Birmingham in the UK. "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!" The team's findings will be presented at the 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves. A 400-Year-Old Mystery About The Sun May Finally Be Solved Mars Seen Up Close in Stunning World First 60 Years Ago Today NASA Rover Breaks Record For Longest Road Trip on Another Planet
TimesLIVE
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
‘Being different is cool': Lila Moss on becoming first Barbie with diabetes
Arzón debuted the new diabetes Barbie at Peloton Studios New York on July 8, where members of the T1D community gathered for the unveiling. 'After being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes a decade ago, I've found a lot of purpose in advocating for people with the condition. It's an honour to receive a Barbie doll as a part of the brand's efforts to grow awareness and representation. All types of challenges give us all the more reason to push forward and achieve our dreams,' said Arzón. Mattel said the new doll joins the Barbie Fashionistas line, which includes more than 175 diverse looks across varying skin tones, body types, hair textures and medical conditions, including Barbies with hearing aids, Down syndrome, vitiligo and a prosthetic limb. The 2025 Fashionistas range is also focused on sustainability. Mattel confirmed the new dolls commit to using at least 50% ISCC-certified bio-circular plastic, with packaging made from FSC-certified materials, which is part of the company's effort to reduce reliance on fossil-based materials. 'In 2020 Barbie kicked off a multi-year study with researchers at Cardiff University. It found doll play fosters empathy and social development, helping children imagine their futures on an equal playing field,' said Mattel. In South Africa 29-year-old singer Holly Rae was unveiled as a local ambassado alongside with 10-year-old dancer Sayuri Sewsunker. The 2025 Barbie Fashionistas line including the Type 1 Diabetes Barbie is available at the Mattel Shop and major retailers nationwide.
