Rotating black holes collide. Illustration Credit: Aurore Simonnet (SSU/EdEon), LVK, URI; LIGO Collaboration
Rotating black holes collide. Earlier this year, both LIGO observatories in Washington and Louisiana detected the event known as GW250114.
It was the strongest gravitational wave signal ever recorded, but what did it reveal?
The signal came from two black holes, each about 33 times the mass of our Sun, merging into a single black hole of about 63 solar masses.
Although the collision happened a billion light-years away, the signal was so clear that scientists could precisely measure the spins of the black holes and even the vibrations, or “ringing,” of the final black hole.
The data also confirmed a key prediction: the total surface area of the new black hole’s event horizon is larger than the combined areas of the original two.
The illustration above offers an artistic vision of what it might look like near one of the black holes just before impact.
source APOD
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