A pair of distant cosmic black hole mergers is improving how scientists understand the nature and evolution of the most violent deep-space collisions in our universe.
In a new paper published Oct. 28 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration reports on the detection of two gravitational wave events in October and November of last year with unusual black hole spins. The paper includes contributions from three co-authors from Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.
Data collected from the mergers also validates, with unprecedented accuracy, fundamental laws of physics that were predicted more than 100 years ago by Albert Einstein and furthers the search for new and still unknown elementary particles with the potential to extract energy from black holes.
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