GRAVITATIONAL WAVES : NEW CLUES TO BLACK HOLE FORMATION

摘要

Ever since the news broke of the first direct detection of gravitational waves by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, a lot has been written about the historic discovery, but few have pointed to the mystery of the masses of the two black holes, located 1.3 billion lightyears away, the merger of which is believed to have created the ripples in spacetime detected by LIGO. According to the scientists, this is the first black-hole merger that scientists have observed. The violent event radiated more energy in a short time - in the form of gravitational waves - "than all the stars in the observable Universe emitted as light in the same amount of time".