Space breakthrough as astronomers get clearest signal ever from black hole collision

The generational wave resulted from two massive black holes merging in a distant galaxy beyond the Milky Way.

It was recorded on January 14 at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory facilities in Washington and Louisiana.

The cosmic event involved one black hole measuring approximately 34 solar masses colliding with another of 32 solar masses.

Their violent merger, completed within milliseconds whilst orbiting at nearly light speed, produced a single rotating black hole with a mass 63 times greater than our sun.

This newly formed black hole spins at roughly 100 revolutions per second.

The collision released extraordinary energy equivalent to destroying three stars the size of our sun, which radiated outward as gravitational waves across the universe.

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Researchers at the National Science Foundation's LIGO facilities detected these space-time ripples using advanced laser interferometry.

The observations benefited from technological enhancements that provided four times better resolution than the pioneering 2015 detection, allowing unprecedented precision in measuring the merger's characteristics.

The measurements revealed that the merging black holes possessed a combined event horizon surface area of approximately 240,000 square kilometres, comparable to the size of the UK.

Following the collision, the resulting black hole's surface area expanded to roughly 400,000 square kilometres, roughly equivalent to the size of Sweden.

This expansion validates Professor Hawking's theory that event horizon areas must increase during mergers.

"This is the first time that we have been able to make this measurement so precisely, and it's exciting to have direct experimental confirmation of such an important idea about the behavior of black holes," stated astrophysicist Will Farr from Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute.

The observations additionally confirmed Einstein's concept that black holes possess remarkable simplicity, being fully characterised solely by their mass and rotation, as mathematically described by Roy Kerr in 1963.

The gravitational wave signal's exceptional strength distinguished this detection from previous observations.

Geraint Pratten, Royal Society University Fellow at the University of Birmingham, said: "GW250114 is the loudest gravitational wave event we have detected to date, it was like a whisper becoming a shout."

The detection involved international collaboration between LIGO in America, Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan.

Researchers examined gravitational wave frequencies to determine the black holes' properties, comparing the process to identifying a bell's composition from its sound.

"Thanks to Albert Einstein, we know that space and time are intertwined and are best thought of as facets of a single entity, space-time," noted astrophysicist Maximiliano Isi from Columbia University and the Flatiron Institute, who led the research published in Physical Review Letters.

Professor Isi said: "This manifests, for example, in that time flows at different rates depending on where you are.

"Close to a heavy object, like a black hole, time flows more slowly compared to someone farther away, so that someone close to a black hole would age more slowly."

The researchers analysed the frequencies of the detected gravitational waves to discern fundamental qualities of the black holes immediately before and after the merger.

While these frequencies were not sound waves, the researchers compared them to the ringing of a bell.

Professor Isi concluded: "This is just like trying to figure out what a bell is made out of from the ringing sound it makes when struck."