New type of black hole discovered by gravitational waves

Artist's impression of a supermassive black hole.

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It took 7 billion light years to reach us: a black hole of unprecedented mass, resulting from the fusion of two black holes, was directly observed for the first time thanks to gravitational waves, a major discovery for the understanding of the universe.

“It is a door that opens onto a new cosmic landscape.

A whole new world!

», Welcomed during a press conference Stavros Katsanevas, the director of Virgo, one of the two gravitational wave detectors which picked up the signals of this new black hole.

A mysterious object

This is the first direct proof of the existence of black holes of intermediate mass (between 100 and 100,000 times more massive than the Sun), which could explain one of the puzzles of cosmology: the formation of supermassive black holes. , these cosmic monsters lurk in the heart of certain galaxies, including the Milky Way.

The mysterious object, described in Physical Review Letters and Astrophysical Journal Letters by an international team of more than 1,500 scientists, is called "GW190521".

Most likely the result of the merger of two black holes, it is 142 times the mass of the sun and forms the most massive black hole ever detected by gravitational waves (supermassives, billions of times larger, are detected otherwise).

Predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915 in his theory of general relativity and observed directly a century later, gravitational waves are tiny deformations of space-time, similar to ripples of water on the surface of a pond.

They are born under the effect of violent cosmic phenomena, such as the collision of two black holes which emit a phenomenal amount of energy.

The gravitational wave of GW190521 took 7 billion years to reach us: it is the most distant black hole, and therefore the oldest, ever discovered.

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