A Burst of Light Unlike Any Captured Before
Astronomers say they have captured an unexpected spark from a collision of two black holes.
by Marina Koren
Jun 25, 2020
3 minutes
Astronomers don’t usually jump out of bed when they receive alerts in the middle of the night that, somewhere far away, two black holes have smacked into each other and sent shock waves coursing through the universe. These days, the detection of colliding black holes verges on routine, and astronomers know what to do: Go back to sleep.
They will rouse in the case of a merger between —leftover cores of giant stars that ran out of fuel and imploded—so that they can summon telescopes to scan the sky . But with a pair of
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