Scientists Detect Biggest Merger Of Two Black Holes In History

Scientists have detected the most massive merger of two black holes ever recorded for the first time in history. The celestial event, which took place about 10 billion light-years from Earth, created powerful ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves, picked up by special detectors like LIGO.

The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, spiralled into one another and collided after circling each other long ago, forming a massive black hole, The Guardian reported.

Researchers detected the black hole collision in November 2023, one in Washington and one in Louisiana.

The black holes first revolved around each other and then came closer before becoming one and blasting gravitational waves in the process, according to a report in Science News. The result was a black hole with a mass about 225 times that of the sun, according to researchers. Before this collision, the biggest such event was a black hole of about 140 solar masses. To put the enormity of the new event in context, this time, one of the two black holes alone had a similar mass.

Scientists at LIGO believe that these two black holes, which recently merged, were not originally formed from stars but likely created from earlier black hole mergers. This could be the reason for their size.

Professor Mark Hannam, who leads the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University, explained that the black hole collisions were the most violent and powerful events in the universe. He said the gravitational waves were thousands of times smaller than a proton. So by the time they reach Earth, they become difficult to detect.

The gravitational waves caused the detectors to move slightly by stretching and squeezing for one tenth of a second, which the scientists have called the "ringdown phase". 

Mr Hannam said that these were the biggest black holes ever measured using gravitational waves. The black holes of this size were expected to form easily, he added.

The majority of black holes are created when huge stars, toward the end of their lives, collapse due to a shortage of nuclear fuel. The extremely dense objects cause space-time to bend to such an extent that they produce an event horizon, a boundary that prevents even light from escaping, reported the Guardian.

So far, scientists have detected 300 black hole collisions by measuring the gravitational waves.