Record-Breaking Black Hole Merger Challenges Theories

(MENAFN) Scientists have identified the largest black hole merger ever recorded, resulting from the collision of two colossal black holes more than 10 billion light-years from our planet, researchers revealed on Monday.

Each of these cosmic giants had a mass exceeding 100 times that of our sun.

They gradually spiraled toward each other and ultimately combined, forming a new black hole believed to weigh roughly 265 times the mass of the sun.

This discovery was made using data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), based in the United States.

“These are the most violent events we can observe in the universe, but when the signals reach Earth, they are the weakest phenomena we can measure,” Professor Mark Hannam told a news outlet adding: “By the time these ripples wash up on Earth they are tiny,” referencing theories that these black holes may themselves be the product of previous black hole mergers.

Black holes generally arise when enormous stars burn through their nuclear energy and collapse under their own gravity at the end of their lives, forming an intense gravitational field that absorbs anything approaching too closely.

However, this exceptional merger has pushed the boundaries of current scientific understanding about the origins of such massive cosmic objects.

Ground-based instruments managed to pick up extremely faint gravitational ripples—disturbances in space-time—smaller than a proton.

The resulting black hole is now rotating at almost the theoretical maximum speed, about 400,000 times faster than Earth’s own rotation.

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