When two black holes, or one black hole and a neutron star, get sucked into one another, they produce one of the most violent and energetic events in the universe. These events known as gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein, who suggested that the energy released would be so huge it could disrupt the space-time continuum itself.
The first such event was detected in 2015, and since then scientists have been detecting more such events with the help of an international team of researchers and equipment that’s creating a paradigm in our mission to learn how stars live and die.
35 new events discovered
The latest finding, as per a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed research paper, found by ScienceAlert, the team has detected 35 of these events between November 2019 and March 2020. With the aid of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) — the world’s biggest gravitational wave observatory, and Virgo, a smaller instrument, the team managed to track down these events.
“These discoveries represent a tenfold increase in the number of gravitational waves detected by LIGO and Virgo since they started observing,” said Susan Scott, co-author of the paper, in a statement. “We’ve detected 35 events,” she added. “That’s massive! In contrast, we made three detections in our first observing run, which lasted four months in 2015-16.”
100 times bigger than our sun
32 are suspected to be the result of black holes merging, giving birth to a new hole. These newly created supermassive black holes can balloon into gigantic structures that are 100 times the mass of our Sun. Some of these events happened likely due to a neutron star colliding with a black hole.
“The excellent sensitivities of the detectors have allowed for the observation of so many more exciting gravitational wave events, including the first ever confident neutron star-black hole binary detection,” said Madeline Wade, co-author in another statement.
Previously, a team of astronomers discovered a series of bright flares of X-ray light coming from behind a supermassive black hole. This was an unexpected place for scientists to detect light. The discovery was made due to an unusual characteristic of black holes.
