Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III – Space

In news

• Analyses of signals from gravitational waves detected in 2019 at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the USA and the detector Virgo at Italy have indicated a black hole with unusual mass.

Key takeaways

• These waves were a result of a collision between two black holes billions of years ago.
• The signal has been named GW190521.
• It likely represented the instant that the two black holes merged.

• It lasted less than one-tenth of a second.
• It was calculated to have come from roughly 17 billion light-years away.

Do you know?

• Out of the two, the larger black hole was of 85 solar masses and the smaller black hole was of 66 solar masses
• In the merger leading to the GW190521 signal, the larger black hole was well within the unexpected range, known as the pair-instability mass gap.
• The researchers suggest that the larger 85-solar-mass black hole was not the product of a collapsing star but was itself the result of a previous merger.

Important value additions

About LIGO

• It is a large scale physics experiment observatory established in 2002 to detect gravitational waves.
• The present telescopes could detect objects which emit electromagnetic radiations like X-ray, gamma rays etc. However, merger of black holes and many other cataclysmic events do not emit electromagnetic waves rather gravitational waves.
• Thus, LIGO was established to unfold the many unknown phenomenon in universe through the gravitational waves detection.
• Indian participation in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, was done under the umbrella Initiative –IndIGO, which is a consortium of Indian gravitational-wave physicists.