Since the experimental confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves, in 2015, there have been many detections of black hole fusion. These produce a monstrous amount of energy, powerful enough to oscillate the curvature of space-time.
The signal recorded on May 21, 2019 by the detectors Virgo (Italy) and Link (United States) is a priori the most amazing. The analysis of this wave which took seven billion years to reach us (and bears the code name GW190521), would be “The first direct proof of the existence of so-called intermediate mass black holes” , indicates a CNRS press release preceding the scientific publications of these observations in Physical Review Letters and The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Merger of two black holes
The wave seems to come from the merger of two black holes, respectively sixty-five times and eighty-five times more massive than the Sun. Which poses a problem. A black hole is one of the final stages of a star’s life, when it collapses on itself, concentrating its matter so much that even light cannot escape its attraction. However, according to current knowledge, when the mass of stars is between 60 and 120 solar masses, the collapse rather ends in a supernova, a titanic explosion which disperses matter.
So what were these black holes doing there? One of the theories suggests that they themselves could have been born from the fusion of smaller black holes. Over time, black holes would grow larger. And supermassive black holes, monsters lurking in the centers of galaxies, would also result from the merger with more modest colleagues.
– .
