About this episode
This episode discusses the merger of black holes and the gravitational waves produced, providing insights into their properties and the implications for General Relativity.
More than 1.1 billion years ago, a pair of black holes staged a violent merger. As they spiraled inward, the black holes produced an outburst of gravitational waves – “ripples” in spacetime that rang across the universe. Detectors on Earth “heard” those ripples in January of last year. In fact, it was the loudest and clearest detection of merging black holes to date. Analyzing the signal has told scientists quite a bit about black holes, and about the laws of gravity that govern them. The frequency and duration of the gravitational waves revealed details about the black holes. It showed that when they merged, each of them was spinning. And each was about 33 times the mass of the Sun. But the total mass after they merged was only about 62 times the Sun’s mass – less than the combined weight of the individual black holes. The rest of their mass was converted to energy – mainly the gravitational waves. The aftermath of the merger was important as well. The merged black hole vibrated like a ringing bell. As it settled down, the “ringing” faded away. How it faded matched predictions made by General Relativity – the…
People in this episode
Host: Billy Henry
Topics covered
- black holes
- gravitational waves
- General Relativity
- mergers
- spacetime
Keywords
- black holes
- gravitational waves
- General Relativity
- spacetime
- merger
- mass
- energy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: General Relativity
More episodes of StarDate
- ‘Shifting’ Stars · June 12, 2026 · 2 min
- Evening Array · June 11, 2026 · 2 min
- Tight Family · June 10, 2026 · 2 min
- Moon and Saturn · June 9, 2026 · 2 min
- More Venus and Jupiter · June 8, 2026 · 2 min
- Death-Ray Galaxy · June 7, 2026 · 2 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the StarDate podcast page.