Gravitational waves – The Conversation

Astronomers have discovered the first dormant black hole outside of the Milky Way. These black holes are not absorbing matter from a nearby star, making them incredibly hard to find.

For the first time, scientists have gained information from the very surface of a newborn black hole.

Astronomers have spotted runaway black holes screaming through space, leaving trails of stars in in their wake.

First, gravitational waves proved Einstein correct. Now, they’ve confirmed Stephen Hawking was right about black holes.

Too big to come from a dying star and too small to inhabit the center of a galaxy, these black holes are a puzzle that scientists are using LIGO to investigate.

The first International Astronomical Union General Assembly was held just over 100 years ago, in Rome, Italy.

Studying theoretical, fast-spinning black holes is helping physicists understand more about the elusive black holes out in the universe.

Analysis of two major cosmic blasts deepens the mystery of where the universe’s ‘heavy’ elements come from.

Gravitational waves carry information about massive cosmic events and help scientists to ‘listen’ to space.

How scientists are planning to listen to the sound of the big bang with a gravitational wave detector that would fit in a kitchen.

A new effort to map the rumblings in spacetime caused by enormous black hole collisions paints a surprisingly loud and lopsided picture of the universe.

Massive flashes of energy known as ‘fast radio bursts’ have puzzled astronomers for years – and a new search for links to gravitational waves has so far found no connection.

New discovery settles a wager between astrophysicists: black holes can merge repeatedly.

The astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey for the 2020s lays out plans to search for life on distant planets, understand the formation of galaxies and solve deep mysteries of physics.

Gravitational waves reveal the demise of super-dense neutron stars spiralling into their black hole companions - the first time such strange and exotic star systems have ever been observed.

For years, astronomers have been detecting incredibly powerful pulses from the cosmos, without a confirmed source. Recent advances in astronomy are getting us closer to the solution.

Stephen Hawking’s prediction about what happens when two black holes merge has finally been verified.

A small add-on to existing gravitational wave detectors could reveal what happens to matter as it becomes a black hole, a process like the big bang in reverse.

A decade after the first discovery, scientists have used these waves to find a unique merger, a massive binary system and a crystal-clear gravitational wave signal.