Latest news with #LaserInterferometerGravitational-waveObservatory
USA Today
15-07-2025
- Science
- USA Today
A look at the collision that created the biggest black hole merger yet
It's nearly 10 billion light-years away, and you won't see it in the night sky, but the explosive collision of two massive black holes detected in 2023 has created a third one, with 225 times the mass of our sun, the largest black hole merger ever charted. The stellar event has astrophysicists rewriting record books and rethinking theories on how objects form in space. The collision is noteworthy because the two black holes were larger than those in previous collisions. One was about 140 times the mass of our sun, the other about 100 times the mass. (Some mass was converted to energy in the collision.) How was the collision of two black holes detected? The two black holes were spinning at about 400,000 times faster than the Earth's rotation when they collided, billions of years ago. The collision created gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime. They were detected on Nov. 23, 2023, by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory devices on Earth. LIGO designated the gravitational wave signal as GW231123. And while this is the largest black hole merger we've seen, larger black holes exist. The M87 black hole has an estimated mass of 6.5 billion suns. The TON 618 black hole has 40 billion solar masses. What are black holes and why are they important? Black holes 'aren't really holes,' NASA says. 'They're huge concentrations of matter packed into very tiny spaces.' 'A black hole is so dense that gravity just beneath its surface, the event horizon, is strong enough that nothing – not even light – can escape. The event horizon isn't a surface like Earth's or even the Sun's. It's a boundary that contains all the matter that makes up the black hole.' It's likely there are "millions of black holes in the Milky Way alone," according to the National Science Foundation. They orbit "like the stars, but we cannot see them." For the most part, "black holes are created when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives," says the University of Chicago. Studying them has "yielded enormous insights about the nature of the universe." The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration has identified 69 gravitational-wave signals from binary black hole mergers from 2015 to 2020. The collaboration announced the GW231123 discovery at the GR-Amaldi gravitational-waves conference in Glasgow, United Kingdom, on July 14. The LIGO program is funded by the National Science Foundation, which faces a proposed $5.2 billion budget cut from the Trump administration. One of the two LIGO observatories could be closed if the cuts are made. SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; NASA; California Institute of Technology; LIGO CalTech; Nature;
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
AI designs 50 gravitational wave detectors that could outperform human-made ones
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists announced they have developed an artificial intelligence program capable of designing gravitational wave detectors that outperform human-made versions, potentially supercharging our ability to "hear" the universe. Gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of spacetime, are caused by cataclysmic events like merging black holes. Scientists detect these waves using giant L-shaped instruments called "interferometers," which measure incredibly tiny changes in spacetime as a wave passes by Earth. While current gravitational wave detectors — such as Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and its sister site Virgo — have proven very successful, a new study argues there exists an "unimaginably large" realm of experimental designs yet to be explored by human researchers. This unexplored territory presents a major opportunity for AI to rapidly discover innovative detector designs more efficiently than humans can — opening new avenues for "listening" to the universe, the researchers say. One such AI-powered algorithm, named Urania, recently identified 50 novel detector designs that outperformed the best experimental blueprints created by human scientists, the new study reports. Scientists say these designs could expand the observable volume of the universe by a factor of 50 — a leap comparable to going from hearing whispers in the next room to conversations across the entire city. "We are in an era where machines can discover new super-human solutions in science, and the task of humans is to understand what the machine has done," study lead author Mario Krenn, a quantum physicist who leads a research group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany, said in a statement. "This will certainly become a very prominent part of the future of science." Urania's proposed gravitational wave detectors span a broad frequency range — from 10 to 5000 Hz — capturing signals from a wide array of cosmic events, according to the new study. This range encompasses signals from black hole mergers, including those from the universe's first stars; understanding such events is key to potentially unlocking mysteries of so-called "dark sirens" in the cosmos and refining measurements of the Hubble constant, which describes the universe's expansion rate. One AI-designed detector increases sensitivity to gravitational waves from supernovas by a factor of 1.6 compared to LIGO's upcoming Voyager upgrade — potentially quadrupling the number of detectable events by allowing the detection of fainter and more distant signals, the new study reports. Related Stories: — 'Daredevil' white dwarf star could be closest-known object to a weird black hole — Unknown physics may help dark energy act as 'antigravity' throughout the universe — Supermassive black holes bent the laws of physics to grow to monstrous sizes Another such detector shows promise in identifying the early stages of binary neutron star mergers, providing advance warning for telescopes to observe the accompanying electromagnetic emissions and capture richer scientific data. These detectors could also capture gravitational waves emitted after the neutron stars collide, known as post-merger signals, which are thought to contain vital information about the ultra-dense matter inside neutron stars. Scientists say this could reveal exotic states of matter and deepen our understanding of the fundamental physics governing these extreme environments. "Our approach could inspire AI-driven innovations in other scientific fields, helping us design the next generation of precision instruments to explore the universe in ways we have yet to imagine," Krenn and his colleagues write in the new study. The researchers have published a "gravitational wave detector zoo, or collection of the 50 top detector designs developed with Urania. The goal is to inspire new approaches for next-generation instruments. According to the study, a few of these designs could be implemented as upgrades to existing facilities following successful testing. This research is described in a paper published April 11 in the journal Physical Review X.
