There’s another collection of intriguing waves from a distant super massive black hole billowing over our tiny planet which is otherwise just a ‘pale blue dot’ in huge swathes of universe.
Yes! after the previous announcement of picking up gravitational waves in February this year, astrophysicists at the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Louisiana and Washington, has once again declared the identification of more similar waves. Reportedly these waves were detected billowing over Earth on December 26, 2015.
LIGO in Louisiana Image courtesy: motherboard.vice.com
The first detection of gravitational waves had confirmed Einstein’s theory of ‘General Relativity’ and thus marking the beginning of new field of study – gravitational wave astronomy.
In the latest case of wave detection, physicists have concluded that these waves were produced during the final moments of the merger of two black holes (14 to 15 times the mass of the sun) to produce a single massive black hole – supposedly 21 times the mass of the sun!
Watch the simulation of the black merger:
“It is very significant that these black holes were much less massive than those observed in the first detection,”: Gabriela Gonzalez, LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) spokesperson, was quoted saying by futurity.org.
“Because of their lighter masses compared to the first detection, they spent more time—about one second—in the sensitive band of the detectors. It is a promising start to mapping the populations of black holes in our universe,” she added.
According to the calculations made by the scientists at LIGO, the merger took place some 1.4 billions years ago and the quantity of energy released in the form of gravitational waves is roughly equivalent to the mass of the sun.
This is second detection in a span of just four months.
