A "forbidden" merger between two massive black holes may not have been quite as impossible as previously thought. That's according to new research that suggests the black holes involved were smaller than expected.
On Nov. 23, 2023, the gravitational wave detector LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detected tiny ripples in spacetime caused by the merger of two black holes. What was incredible about this signal, designated GW231123, was that it seemed to be the result of a black hole with 140 times the mass of the sun colliding with another that holds 100 solar masses.
This raised eyebrows among researchers because usual models of stellar evolution struggle to account for such massive black holes, especially ones that seemed to be spinning as fast as these two....
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