An international team of astronomers witnessed the birth of the first intermediate-mass black hole ever detected.
This signal, resembling four short wiggles, lasted less than a tenth of a second.
Yet, it revealed the formation of the first intermediate-massblack holeever discovered.
One of the great mysteries in astrophysics is how do supermassive black holes form?
They are the million solar-mass elephants in the room.
Long have we searched for an intermediate-mass black hole to bridge the gap between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes.
The other black hole involved in this merger comes in with a mass around 66 solar masses.
As the star ages, it fuses continually heavier elements, until iron is produced and nuclear fusion ceases.
However, in more massive stars, highly-energetic photons of light convert into matter electron and positron pairs.
These exert less pressure on the dying star, destabilizing the star, resulting in an explosion.
[T]he star collapses when radiation pressure is reduced.
As it collapses, the star heats and becomes [denser], which triggers explosive nuclear reactions.
Its these which disrupt the star, Berry tells The Cosmic Companion.
This makes this collision the most distant object ever recorded by a gravitational wave observatory.
This doesnt look much like a chirp, which is what we typically detect.
Considering the gravity of the situation
Gravitational waves are ripples within the fabric of spacetime.
Searching for gravitational waves is the newest branch of astronomy, requiring detectors of enormous size.
LIGO is four kilometers long, and Virgo is three-quarters of that length.
Nearly every target seen by gravitational wave observatories have been titanic collisions between black holes and/orneutron stars.
This finding is the most massive event yet recorded by gravitational wave astronomers.
Gravitational-wave observations are revolutionary.
Each new detection refines our understanding of how black holes form.
This event marks the most massive source ever detected by astronomers using instruments designed to detect gravitational waves.
This article was originally published onThe Cosmic CompanionbyJames Maynard, founder and publisher of The Cosmic Companion.
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