Caught in a fatal inward spiral, a neutron star met its end when a black hole swallowed it whole. Gravitational ripples from that collision spread outward through the cosmos, eventually reaching Earth. The detection of those waves marks the first reported sighting of a black hole engulfing the dense remnant of dead star. And in a surprise twist, scientists spotted a second such merger just days after the first.“This is an absolute first look,” says theoretical physicist Susan Scott of the Australian National University in Canberra, a member of the LIGO collaboration.
The result adds another tick mark to the tally of new discoveries made with gravitational waves. “That’s worth celebration,” says astrophysicist Cole Miller of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved with the research. Since the first gravitational waves were detected in 2015, the observatories keep revealing new secrets. “It’s fantastic new things; it’s not just the same old, same old,” he says.
Signs of the black hole-neutron star collisions registered in the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories in 2020, on January 5 and January 15. The first merger consisted of a black hole about 8.9 times the mass of the sun and a neutron star about 1.9 times the sun’s mass. The second merger had a 5.7 solar mass black hole and a 1.5 solar mass neutron star. Both collisions occurred more than 900 million light-years from Earth, the scientists estimate.
To form detectable gravitational waves, the objects that coalesce must be extremely dense, with identities that can be pinned down by their masses. Anything with a mass above five solar masses could only be a black hole, scientists think. Anything less than about three solar masses must be a neutron star.
The result adds another tick mark to the tally of new discoveries made with gravitational waves. “That’s worth celebration,” says astrophysicist Cole Miller of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved with the research. Since the first gravitational waves were detected in 2015, the observatories keep revealing new secrets. “It’s fantastic new things; it’s not just the same old, same old,” he says.
Signs of the black hole-neutron star collisions registered in the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories in 2020, on January 5 and January 15. The first merger consisted of a black hole about 8.9 times the mass of the sun and a neutron star about 1.9 times the sun’s mass. The second merger had a 5.7 solar mass black hole and a 1.5 solar mass neutron star. Both collisions occurred more than 900 million light-years from Earth, the scientists estimate.
To form detectable gravitational waves, the objects that coalesce must be extremely dense, with identities that can be pinned down by their masses. Anything with a mass above five solar masses could only be a black hole, scientists think. Anything less than about three solar masses must be a neutron star.
