Scientists Detect Biggest Ever Merger of Two Massive Black Holes

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Detected by the LVK Network of observatories, involving LIGO detector in United States, Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan.

Key Highlights of the Event

Event: The event, GW231123, occurred billions of years ago and was detected through Gravitational Waves (GW) from it.
- GW are 'ripples' in space-time caused by some of most violent and energetic processes in the Universe.
- Albert Einstein (in his General Theory of Relativity) predicted their existence in 1916.
Heaviest Merger: Involved two black holes with masses of about 100 and 140 times the Sun merging to form a final black hole weighing ~225 solar masses.

They are astronomical objects with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.
Types
- Stellar-mass : Around 20 times the Sun’s mass or more.
- Intermediate-mass: Around one hundred to hundreds of thousands of times the Sun’s mass.
- Supermassive: Hundreds of thousands to billions of times the Sun’s mass.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory-LIGO: Wholly supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), world’s largest gravitational wave observatory.
- Currently, has two detectors in Hanford, Washington and Livingston Louisiana.
- LIGO-India is to be developed in Hingoli, Maharashtra in collaboration with NSF.
Virgo, in Pisa, Italy: Hosted by European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), a collaboration of Italy and France.
KAGRA, Japan: Located inside the Kamioka mine.