Observatories’ joint run last summer was the most sensitive yet
The latest catalogue of gravitational wave signals has uncovered 35 new events, bringing the total so far detected to 90. The signals all come from black holes and neutron star mergers, and were detected by the US LIGO, the European Virgo and the Japanese KAGRA gravitational wave observatories during an observing run ending on 27 March 2020.
Among the new discoveries were some rarer events, such as a neutron star being swallowed by a black hole 32 times the mass of our Sun, and the creation of an intermediate mass black hole.
“The new observations continue to challenge our understanding of how stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars form, and how they come to orbit each other until they merge,” says Alessandra Buonanno from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics.
The observatories are shut down for upgrades, but will recommence operations in late 2022. www.ligo.caltech.edu