Astronomers reported on Wednesday that they had detected the loudest, most massive and most violent collision yet between a pair of black holes. That short signal from a galaxy far, far away has left astrophysicists with new questions about how black holes form and grow. All the other binary systems that we’ve detected fit reasonably well within expectations. But the black holes in this event aren’t supposed to exist!”One and perhaps both of the colliding holes were too massive to have been produced by the collapse of a star, according to conventional theories. Moreover, the merger created an even larger black hole, 142 times as massive as the sun, belonging to a whole new category of intermediate-mass, or “missing link,” black holes never reliably seen before.

Source: International New York Times September 02, 2020 19:07 UTC