"An eon ago, when only microbes dwelled on Earth, a pair of black holes some 1.3 billion light-years beyond the solar system spiraled toward each other until they crashed. The two became one big black hole that rang out in far-reaching undulations of spacetime called gravitational waves. These ripples finally reached Earth in January 2025, where they registered in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment as the most precise direct measurements of gravitational waves ever made."
"The black holes involved in the smash-up contained about 33 and 32 times the mass of the sun, respectively. As they fell toward each other and coalesced, the resulting gravitational waves spread out into the universe in all directions; the fraction that trickled into LIGO's detectors was a signal that researchers named GW250114. Studying the particular features of this signal allowed them to determine the black holes' initial sizes,"
"as well as the fact that the resulting larger black hole contained about 62 times the mass of the sun. The waves also revealed that the original black holes had a combined surface area of about 240,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Oregon), whereas the final black hole had an area of some 400,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of California)."
Two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away, with masses near 33 and 32 solar masses, merged and produced gravitational waves detected by LIGO in January 2025. The signal, labeled GW250114, provided precise direct measurements that allowed determination of the progenitor masses and the final black hole mass of about 62 solar masses. Analysis showed the combined event-horizon surface area increased from roughly 240,000 to about 400,000 square kilometers after the merger. The measurements confirmed a 54-year-old Hawking prediction about how black hole horizons grow with mass and supported the no-hair theorem.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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