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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 20 2017, @02:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the size-matters dept.

Even small black holes emit gravitational waves when they collide, and LIGO heard them

LIGO scientists say they have discovered gravitational waves coming from another black hole merger, and it's the tiniest one they've ever seen.

The findings, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the diversity of the black hole population — and may help scientists figure out why larger black holes appear to behave a little differently from the smaller ones.

"Its mass makes it very interesting," said Salvatore Vitale, a data analyst and theorist with the LIGO Lab at MIT. The discovery, he added, "really starts populating more of this low-mass region that [until now] was quite empty."

The black holes had estimated masses of around 12 and 7 solar masses.

Related: LIGO May Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars for the First Time
First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
"Kilonova" Observed Using Gravitational Waves, Sparking Era of "Multimessenger Astrophysics"


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 20 2017, @10:17AM

    by anubi (2828) on Monday November 20 2017, @10:17AM (#599207) Journal

    Thanks for the links. I watched your last one first.. intriguing.. they have the same belief I have about EM drives and "energy from the vacuum", but I do not understand the underlying physics, rather I am merely conjecturing using previous observations as basis.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]