🎧 The Quiet Fireworks of the Cosmos: Listening to Black Hole Duets

🎧 The Quiet Fireworks of the Cosmos

What is the sound of two black holes merging in deep space?

Sound waves don’t propagate in vacuum, but gravitational waves do.

In 2015 we were able to “hear” them for the first time and confirm one of Albert Einstein‘s theoretical predictions.

📊 The Catalog of Cosmic Mergers

Each square on the grid of the featured image represents one of the gravitational wave detections announced so far by the LIGO–VIRGO–KAGRACollaboration. 🌌

🎵 The Chirp Signal

These plots show how the binary pair accelerates in their orbit around each other towards merger: the rising frequency effect is called a “chirp.” 🎶

🕳️ Why Black Holes Dominate

Although there are significantly more neutron stars than black holes, most of the detections are binary black hole mergers.

That happens because black holes are heavier and their signals are louder and can be seen farther away, resulting in more detections.

These events are rare, and we don’t expect to see one close by in our Galaxy any time soon.

But they are happening continuously throughout the cosmos. 💥

🔗 Image Credit: Ryan Nowicki, Bill Smith & Karan Jani