Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA)

Black Hole Encounter

In late 2015, LIGO discovered gravitational waves emitted by two black holes (each with a mass of about 30 times that of our Sun) that spiraled together and merged about 1.5 billion years ago. Astrophysicists are now debating which is the most likely mechanism that can bring two black holes like those observed so close

Image created by A. M. Geller. Monte Carlo globular cluster simulation performed by S. Chatterjee using the Northwestern CMC code. Black hole ray tracing simulation performed by A. Geller using GeoViS.