Possible Detection of a Black Hole So Big It ‘Should Not Exist’

Black Hole 2880x1700 Lede’Black hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible.

“The prediction is no black holes, not even a few” in this mass range, wrote Stan Woosley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in an email. “But of course we know nature often finds a way.”

Seven experts contacted by Quanta said they’d heard that among the 22 flurries of gravitational waves detected by LIGO and Virgo since April, one of the signals came from a collision involving a black hole of unanticipated heft — purportedly as heavy as 100 suns.…’

Via Quanta Magazine

One thought on “Possible Detection of a Black Hole So Big It ‘Should Not Exist’

  1. Something is wrong with this article: According to Wikipedia supermassive black holes can have a mass hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the sun.

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