Historic discovery: Largest Black Hole merger detected

International researchers working as part of the LIGO-Virgo- KAGRA (LVK) collaboration announced that this merger, dubbed "GW231123," formed a new black hole with a mass of 225 solar masses. This merger is the most massive structure formed by the merger of black holes in history.

LIGO first detected gravitational waves in 2016, providing powerful evidence for Einstein's theory of general relativity . These waves are described as vibrations in the fabric of spacetime that propagate at the speed of light. LIGO's extraordinarily sensitive detectors are used to measure these waves.

LIGO, working with Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, forms the LVK observing network. This network's observations in November 2023 led to the detection of the historic GW231123 event. The masses of the colliding black holes in this merger were measured at approximately 100 and 140 solar masses, respectively. The previous record was held by GW190521, discovered in 2021, and the resulting black hole weighed 140 solar masses.

What makes GW231123 even more remarkable is that both black holes are spinning at nearly the maximum speeds allowed by general relativity. Experts say that such rapid rotations cannot be explained by standard models of stellar evolution , and this observation challenges existing theories.

Scientists' strongest guess right now is that these black holes are "second-generation" black holes, formed from previous mergers. In other words, these massive structures may have been formed by the mergers of smaller black holes in the past.

It is stated that this discovery may cause us to reconsider both our knowledge of the functioning of the universe and our assumptions about the evolutionary history of black holes.