Rochester Institute of Technology | 2016 June 22
A new study published in Nature presents one of the most complete models of matter in the universe and predicts hundreds of massive black hole mergers each year observable with the second generation of gravitational wave detectors.
The model anticipated the massive black holes observed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. The two colliding masses created the first directly detected gravitational waves and confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity. ...
Massive stars that collapse upon themselves and end their lives as black holes, like the pair LIGO detected, are extremely rare, O’Shaughnessy said. They are less evolved, “more primitive stars,” that occur in special configurations in the universe. These stars from the early universe are made of more pristine hydrogen, a gas which makes them “Titans among stars,” at 40 to 100 solar masses. In contrast, younger generations of stars consumed the corpses of their predecessors containing heavy elements, which stunted their growth. ...
O’Shaughnessy and his colleagues predict that massive black holes like these spin in a stable way, with orbits that remain in the same plane. The model shows that the alignment of these massive black holes are impervious to the tiny kick that follows the stars’ core collapse. The same kick can change the alignment of smaller black holes and rock their orbital plane. ...
Simulations Foresee Hordes of Colliding Black Holes
University of Chicago | 2016 June 24
The first gravitational-wave source from the isolated evolution of two stars in the 40–100 solar mass range - Krzysztof Belczynski et al
- Nature 534(7608):512 (23 June 2016) DOI: 10.1038/nature18322