The biggest black hole smashup ever detected challenges physics theories

Talk about epic. A collision of two black holes is so extreme that it’s challenging physics theories of how large black holes form and merge.

The two black holes had masses bigger than any before confirmed in such a collision. One had about 140 times the mass of the sun, and the other about 100 solar masses. And both were spinning at nearly the top speed allowed by physics.

“We don’t think it’s possible to form black holes with those masses by the usual mechanism of a star collapsing after it has died,” says physicist Mark Hannam of Cardiff University in Wales, a physicist working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, which detected the crash. That has researchers considering other black hole backstories.

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Author: Rocken

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