For the first time the three large advanced Virgo interferometers and the two instruments of the LIGO jointly identified a gravitational wave resulting from the fusion of two black holes 1.8 billion years ago.
The large LIGO and Virgo interferometers have again detected the traces of a gravitational wave, the signature of the collision between two black holes. "We observe a signal oscillating," explains Benoît Mours, members of the Virgo team at the Annecy Laboratory of Particle Physics, and the closer the two black holes are to each other, the more their rotation around the other is fast, and an increase in the frequency of the signal is observed until the two black holes collapse and merge, starting from the speed at which this signal increases we can calculate the masses of each of the black holes "explains the researcher.
In this new detection, the measurements indicate that one of the black holes had a mass equal to 25 times that of our sun, and the other 31 times. At the end of this impact, the two black holes merged into a gigantic celestial body of a mass 53 times that of the sun. Now the sum of 25 and 31 is supposed to be 56 and not 53. The 3 solar masses missing have therefore been transformed into energy in the form of gravitational waves. The latter spread in space for 1.8 billion years before reaching us. Such an apocalyptic dance had already been observed three times by the detectors LIGO in September then December 2015 and in January 2017
Full article : https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/espace/univers/une-nouvelle-onde-gravitationnelle-a-ete-detectee_116820
wow
Wow. Those detectors are very precise and subtle. Apparently sensing micro changes.