Dense Stellar Clusters Are Home to Black Hole ‘Megamergers’
Black holes in dense stellar clusters could combine repeatedly to form objects bigger than anything a single star could produce. When LIGO’s twin detectors first…
LIGO
Astronomers Investigate Gravitational Wave-Inducing Black Holes
Far from earth, two black holes orbit around each other propagating waves that bend time and space. The existence of such waves — gravitational waves…
Astronomers Use Pulsars to Listen for Gravitational Waves
“By expanding our pulsar timing array over the next 10 years or so, there is a high likelihood of detecting gravitational waves from at least…
Gravitational Waves From Merging Supermassive Black Holes Will Be Detected Within 10 years
A New survey of fast-spinning pulsar stars offers a better estimate of when astronomers will first detect gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes. Astronomers…
Neutron Star Merger Confirms Decades of Predictions
Astronomers observe a binary neutron star merger through gravitational waves detected by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. On August 17, the Laser Interferometry…
LIGO and Virgo Detect Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Hole Merger
Scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors….
Researchers Reveal That Hidden Dimensions Could Influence Gravitational Waves
A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics reveal that hidden dimensions – as predicted by string theory – could influence…
LIGO Detects Merging Ripples in Space and Time
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has made a third detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space and time, demonstrating that a new window in…
Advanced LIGO Looks to Reveal the Mystery of Merging Black Holes
Astrophysicists have been hard at work trying to determine how black holes can come together and merge. A newly published study from the University of…
LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves Again
The twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has detected gravitational waves for the second time. The signal was produced by two black holes colliding 1.4…
Fermi Observations Poised to Pin Down Gravitational Wave Sources
Fermi observations are helping researchers gain a much deeper understanding of gravitational waves. On September 14, waves of energy traveling for more than a billion…
New Research Shows LIGO’s Twin Black Holes Might Have Been Born Inside a Single Star
Newly published research from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests that the burst detected by LIGO occurred because the two black holes lived and died…