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LIGO-Virgo Finds Mystery Object in "Mass Gap"
In August of 2019, the LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave network witnessed the merger of a black hole with 23 times the mass of our sun and a mystery object 2.6 times the mass of the sun. Scientists do not know if the mystery object was a neutron star or black hole, but either way it set a record as being either the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole. Photo: APJ. Source: LIGO-Caltech
On April 12, 2019, the twin LIGO detectors and the Virgo detector observed gravitational-waves from the merger of two black holes. While nearly all previous detections originated from binary black holes with almost equal masses, displayed clear signatures of an unequal mass binary. A detailed analysis of the gravitational-wave signal indicates that the two black holes had masses of about 30 and 8 times the mass of the sun. Photo: PRD. Source: UIB-GRG group.
On January 6th 2020, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration announced the first detection of gravitational waves from the third observation period, O3. The source of the detected signal, named GW190425, is consistent with the merger of a compact binary with total mass of about 3.4 Msun. Photo: A. Simonnet. Source: UIB-GRG group.