HELLOOO THE MOST MASSIVE BLACK HOLE MERGER **EVER** WAS JUST DISCOVERED 5 GIGAPARSECS AWAY, when the Universe was about HALF its current age.

physics is SO COOL!!!

the black hole merger is the first EVER detection of an intermediate-mass black hole--theoretical classes of black holes that are between 100-1,000x the mass of our SUN

we've predicted this type of black hole but this is the first ever clear detection. wow.

for reference, up until now we've detected gravitational waves from several merging black holes that were MUCH smaller than this merger -- on the order of 7 - 30x the mass of our Sun.

this merger, likely 85 & 66x the mass of our Sun, is far, far, far bigger

intermediate-mass black holes are too massive to form from the collapse of a massive star, and too small to be classified as supermassive black holes.

aka they're weirdos

formation scenarios range from:

1) merging stellar mass black holes as one accretes matter onto the other
2) runaway collision of massive stars in stellar clusters
3) primordial black holes formed in the Big Bang (how cool is this)

astrophysicists ( @LIGO & @ego_virgo) discovered this black hole merger by picking up the gravitational waves created by the merger, which have the equivalent energy of about 8 solar masses. 8x the mass of our Sun.

THIS THING IS A MAMMOTH!!

brb going to blast Supermassive Black Hole by Muse

whew this is blowing up— you can follow me on IG, where I talk a lot about space and exploding stars and will probablyyyy answer questions about this black hole merger later today!

http://instagram.com/starstrickenSF 

(*i also talk about women’s health & my dog, which are equally important)