UPSC Articles
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.
