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Gravitational waves: Monster black hole merger detected

JacksinPA

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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46428010

Gravitational waves have been picked up from the biggest black hole merger yet detected.

Scientists say their laser labs sensed the ripples in space-time emanating from this gargantuan collision on 29 July 2017.

The event saw two holes, weighing more than 50 and 34 times the mass of our Sun, uniting to produce a single object over 80 times the mass of our star.

It happened at least five billion light-years from Earth.
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Fascinating development in astrophysics. I'm intrigued by their ability to detect gravitational waves from such a huge distance.

The existence of these waves was postulated by Einstein in 1916.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational-wave_observatory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO

The detection method is called laser interferometry.
 
It will be interesting to see what this development will do to models of the early universe, since so many of them predict specific gravity wave patterns.
 
It will be interesting to see what this development will do to models of the early universe, since so many of them predict specific gravity wave patterns.

Yes. At 5 billion light years we're getting close to the Big Bang. The Universe is a busy place.
 
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