Massive Black Hole detected – Long Ago and Far, Far Away
6.5 Billion years ago, in a place 95 trillion miles away, two black holes were drawn together by the gravitational pull of their incredible masses…
While it may sound like the beginning of a science fiction story, this one appears to be true.
In late May of 2019, a team of research scientists from several institutions picked up on a signal. It came in the form of gravitational waves from deep in space.
The signal was just four brief wiggles on a screen, lasting a mere tenth of a second. But it took the team some time to fully analyze and understand the signal.
This week, the team announced their findings.
Credit: Mark Myers, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav)
The signal they detected is evidence of a black hole with a mass about 142 times that of our sun.
What’s more, the black hole resulted from the merger of two other black holes – a binary black hole.
When the twin black holes completed their merger, they created a pulse of gravity waves. As a result, the energy of these waves was equivalent to 8 times that of our sun.
Like a stone creating ripples in a pond, the gravity waves traveled out into space.
In the U.S., the National Science Foundation has its LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) facility, and in Italy there exists a similar facility called Virgo.
Both facilities make use of a laser interferometer – essentially a system that creates a pair lasers 3 to 4 kilometers (several miles) in length – which can detect the fine ripples of gravity waves.
Labeled GW190521, the signal was picked up by both facilities.
Researchers have determined that it originated at a location so far away that the waves, traveling at the speed of light, took the last half of the age of the Universe to arrive here.
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