Home » Technology » Space-time ripples overturn our understanding of upside-down black holes and neutron stars

Space-time ripples overturn our understanding of upside-down black holes and neutron stars

On August 14, 2019, a ripple in the curvature of space-time was detected by researchers in the United States and Italy. The ripple, a gravitational wave known as GW190814, was one of the strongest ever seen, and disappeared without a trace moments after invading our planet.

Gravitational waves are caused by objects moving at very high speeds. In the past, they have been detected when a star explodes, when two stars rotate around each other, when neutron stars collide – and when two black holes rotate around one. on the other then merge.

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Aside from the size of this particular wave, what was unique about the GW190814 was that it left no trace of where it came from.

Usually, epic interactions in the cosmos leave clues to what has happened; clues for example, such as births by high energy radiation in the form of light, gamma and infrared rays or X-rays from the most energetic stellar death events in the universe.

Now, almost a year later, a full analysis of gravitational wave detection has been released in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the first time that a detailed study of a monumental cosmic collision has been conducted.



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Observations made by the Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) of the MIT laser interferometer and the Virgo installations in Italy, which impatiently await gravitational waves while listening to the sounds of mass collisions in the cosmos, show that the pair GW190814 collided in a deep corner of space, 800 million light years away.

According to research, one of the two celestial bodies involved in the collision is a black hole 23 times larger than our sun, while the other half is about 2.6 times larger.

Scientists say this gap is strange and that means that GW190814 could be either a neutron star – which at this size would usually have collapsed in a black hole – or a black hole itself. In the latter case, this would mean that it is the lightest black hole ever detected.

Anyway, if GW190814 is an ultra-heavy neutron star “maybe even some new physics would be needed to explain it. “ Rory Smith, astrophysicist at Monash University in Australia, told CNET.



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And if it is a clear black hole, such a discovery would mean that our current understanding of how they work will have to be rewritten.

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