Tag: LIGO
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Largest catalog of black hole mergers to date is released
Overview: A sweeping update from the gravitational-wave community An international network of observatories has released version 4.0 of its catalog, listing 128 new black hole merger candidates detected during the first phase of the fourth observing run, O4a. This milestone expands the catalog of gravity-echo events captured as ripples in space and time, demonstrating how…
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GWTC 4.0: The Largest Black Hole Merger Catalog to Date
Introduction: A New Milestone in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy International networks of gravitational-wave observatories have released version 4.0 of their catalog, listing 128 new black hole merger candidates detected during the first phase of the fourth observing run, O4a. This update marks the largest catalog of black hole mergers assembled to date and highlights how gravity-based listening…
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GWTC 4.0: The Largest Catalog of Black Hole Mergers Yet Expands Our View of the Cosmos
Overview: A New Milestone in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy The international network of gravitational-wave detectors has released version 4.0 of its catalog, GWTC 4.0, documenting 128 new black hole merger candidates from the first phase of the fourth observing run, known as O4a. This milestone not only broadens the inventory of cosmic collisions but also strengthens the…
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Catalog Of Simulations Of Black Hole Collisions Expands
Overview: A Growing Repository for Extreme Spacetime Simulations The SXS—Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes—collaboration has long tracked the dynamics of some of the universe’s most violent events: mergers of binary black hole systems. Its catalog of simulations serves as a powerful theoretical backbone for understanding gravitational waves, helping scientists predict what waveform signals should look like when…
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Squashed Orbits Behind Black Hole Collision: Clues to How Mergers Formed
Unraveling the Origin Story of a Black Hole Merger Scientists have taken a crucial step toward understanding how a dramatic black hole collision came to be, by examining a merger that occurred on a surprisingly squashed, or eccentric, orbital path. Detected by the global gravitational-wave network run by LIGO in the United States and Virgo…
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Squashed Orbits Reveal Clues About Mysterious Black Hole Collision
New Clues About How Binary Black Holes Form In a landmark study, researchers are shedding light on the origins of a dramatic black hole merger detected by LIGO and Virgo, one of the few observations showing an unexpectedly squashed, or eccentric, orbital path just before the collision. The event, named GW200208_222617, offers a rare glimpse…
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Squashed Orbits Reveal Likely Origins of Black Hole Collision
Unveiling a Rare Cosmic Collision A cataclysmic collision between two black holes has offered astronomers a rare glimpse into how such binaries form. Detected as GW200208_222617, the event exhibited detectable orbital eccentricity—an oval-shaped path that is less common by the time black holes merge. This finding adds a crucial clue to the long-standing question of…
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New Optical Cavity Detectors Open the Milli-Hz Gravitational-Wave Frontier
A New Path to the Mid-Band Gravitational-Wave Frontier For decades, gravitational waves have revealed themselves across a broad spectrum—from the high frequencies detected by LIGO and Virgo on Earth to the ultra-low frequencies explored by pulsar timing arrays. Yet a crucial gap remained in the middle: the milli-Hertz band, roughly from 10^-5 to 1 Hz,…
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New Approach to Gravitational Wave Detection Opens the Milli-Hz Frontier
A New Frontier in Gravitational Wave Detection Researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Sussex have unveiled a promising new approach to detecting gravitational waves in the milli-Hertz range. This mid-band, or milli-Hz, frequency region has long eluded observation by existing instruments, leaving a gap between high-frequency ground-based detectors and ultra-low-frequency pulsar timing arrays. The…
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Milli-Hertz Frontier: Compact Detectors Find Gravitational Wave ‘Blind Spot’
A new compact approach to a long-standing gap in gravitational wave astronomy Two UK universities have unveiled a ground-based detector concept designed to listen to gravitational waves in the elusive milli-Hertz range, a band long considered inaccessible from Earth. By combining optical resonator technology with mature atomic clock techniques, researchers at the Universities of Birmingham…