The unique gravitational wave signal travelled 650 million light-years to get to the LIGO Livingston Observatory in Louisiana.
Researchers determined the signal came from the merger of two objects.
The signal is dubbed GW230529_181500, or GW230529 for short.
An image of a simulation of a neutron star merger with a small black hole.Image:Ivan Markin, Tim Dietrich (University of Potsdam), Harald Paul Pfeiffer, Alessandra Buonanno (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics)
The smaller object, the astrophysicists concluded, is probably a neutron star.
Their paper describing the signal and its likely origins iscurrently hostedon the LIGO website.
(For gravitational wave connoisseurs, that signal was GW190814.)
A graphic showing the object in the apparent mass gap.Graphic:S. Galaudage, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur.
But the recent observation was the first between a mass-gap object and a neutron star.
Its been a productive couple of years for gravitational wave science, with more excitement on the horizon.
Earlier this year,ESA formally adopted plans for LISA, a space-based gravitational wave observatory.
LISA would consist of three spacecraft spinning through space in a triangular formation.
There are still 80 significant signal candidates that the team needs to sift through.
So there are heady days ahead for observing the gravitational universe.
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Are We Inside a Black Hole?
