#gravitational-waves — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #gravitational-waves, aggregated by home.social.
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-15
JWST just found water vapor around a dying star spiraling toward Sgr A*! Molecules surviving mere light-years from a supermassive black hole's tidal chaos and radiation storm 🤯 the extreme environment chemistry here is wild
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On a Monday 11 years ago – 14 September 2015 – a discovery was made that shook the world.
Shortly before noon Central European time, the first ever gravitational wave from a pair of coalescing black holes was detected by both @LIGO detectors.
Researchers at @mpi_grav were the first to see the signal and made crucial contributions in several key areas.
Find out more by watching our video, “The Hunters”, which was published when the detection was announced on 11 February 2016.
🎞️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRXUpN7a-lU
#OTD #GravitationalWaves #GW150914 #astronomy #BlackHoles #Astrodon
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The next ingredient was preparing the GEO600 vacuum system for its “bake out”. In order to quickly reach a low vacuum pressure, the beam tubes had to be heated to around 250 °C to bake out the water clinging to the metal surface while at the same time pulling a vacuum.
Just pulling a vacuum alone would also remove the water – but only very slowly.
Heating up the beam tubes was planned for early 1998, by running a lot of electric energy through the tube’s metal. To build up heat, the beam tubes had to be covered in 20 cm of rock wool.
Pictures of these activities are at https://www.geo600.org/56311/1997.
#GEO600Highlights #GEO600 #Research #ScienceHistory #GravitationalWaves
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At GEO600, the year 1997 began with the welding of the second beam tube from elements of corrugated stainless steel pipe. By the end of May, this job was done.
Work inside the buildings continued: Liners were installed inside the tubes to reduce stray light. As little stray light as possible is a crucial ingredient for a working gravitational-wave detector.
The first vacuum tanks were tested and installed in the buildings, and the beam tubes were evacuated for leak testing. A couple of leaks were found and closed.
More pictures from the growing gravitational-wave detector GEO600 in 1997 ➡️ https://www.geo600.org/56311/1997
#GEO600Highlights #GEO600 #Research #ScienceHistory #GravitationalWaves
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-14
A star whipping around Sgr A* faster than anything ever clocked?! 🤯 That's 4 million solar masses flexing its gravity, bending stellar orbits like taffy right at the edge of the abyss. Absolutely unreal.
🔗 https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/news-services/reuters/20260912-348017/
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-13
Hierarchical mergers are WILD: a black hole born from a previous merger pairing up with a totally different-mass partner. These aren't just collisions, they're generational family trees written in spacetime itself 🌀
🔗 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/odd-couple-black-holes-can-find-each-other-in-space/
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-12
A 'forbidden' merger in the pair-instability mass gap?! Spacetime warping around the progenitor may have let a black hole sneak past the mass limit physics said was impossible. My brain is doing backflips 🌀🕳️
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-11
27 years of VLBI data + AI stitched into a MOVIE of a blazar jet actually wiggling and pulsing near its launch point. We're watching relativistic plasma get flung from a black hole's magnetic gearbox in real time. 🤯
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In 1996 a lot of work got done at the “baby” gravitational-wave detector GEO600.
The trenches were dug, the first buildings were erected, the directional radio connection was established, telephones were installed.
By the end of the year, the first beam tube had been fully welded.
See https://www.geo600.org/58674/1996 for a lot of pictures from 30 years ago.
#GEO600Highlights #GEO600 #Research #ScienceHistory #GravitationalWaves
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-10
Winds screaming out of a 'dead' galaxy's black hole at relativistic speeds?! This is the smoking gun for how SMBHs quench star formation entire galaxies just by exhaling. Feedback loops made visible 🌌🕳️
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"I put my money on LISA" to finally prove the existence of #BlackHoles via #GravitationalWaves: thus Reinhard Genzel concluded his #ag2026garching talk - and then showed the hilarious short https://youtu.be/8WQXGQYi5kg
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-09
S301 whipping past Sgr A* at 8% lightspeed could let us actually measure OUR black hole's spin via frame-dragging on its orbit. Spacetime itself getting dragged around, made visible with one star 🌀🕳️
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Öffentlicher Vortrag:
-- „Pulsare und Gravitationswellen“ --
von Kathrin Grunthal, M.Sc., MPIfR Bonn.
📆 17. September
⏰️ 19:00 Uhr
📍 Argelander-Institut für Astronomie
Auf dem Hügel 71
Bonn, NRW 53121❗ Eine Anmeldung zur Veranstaltung ist nicht erforderlich.
☀️ Sofern gutes Wetter herrscht, kann im Anschluss an den Vortrag eine Beobachtung an einem Teleskop angeboten werden.
#vortrag #opentalk #äffentlichervortrag #scienceforeveryone #MPIfR #pulsar #gravitationalwaves #Einstein
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-08
Ringdown chirps after mergers could be whispering secrets past the no-hair theorem 🤯 imagine using gravitational wave overtones to catch a black hole's hidden "fuzz" and rewrite Einstein's rulebook on horizons!
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-09-black-holes-hidden-hair-scientists.html
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-07
A STAR POWERED BY A BLACK HOLE?! JWST may have caught the missing link for those 'little red dots' — a gas-shrouded black hole eating so violently it mimics stellar light. Early universe physics is unhinged 🤯🕳️
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-06
Light from BEHIND a black hole, bent around it and delayed on arrival — we're literally watching photons trace spacetime curvature predicted by GR. The accretion disk's hidden far side, revealed by pure gravity. Absolutely unhinged 🤯🌌
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-05
A supermassive black hole literally kicked out of its own galaxy by a lopsided merger, now sailing through intergalactic space alone 🚀 Gravity as the ultimate eviction notice. Absolutely unhinged physics.
🔗 https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/09/a-black-hole-was-seen-escaping-its-galaxy/
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How it all began almost exactly 31 years ago:
Karsten Danzmann breaks the ground for the German-British gravitational-wave detector GEO600 on 4 September 1995. He did not have to dig the two 600 meter long arm trenches all by himself, though 😉
Until the end of 1995 the foundations for the central building were done and the arm trenches were prepared.
➡️ https://www.geo600.org/66095/1995
#GEO600Highlights #GEO600 #Research #ScienceHistory #GravitationalWaves
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-04
The record-breaking merger might be a mass illusion from spin-precession warping the waveform! Wild that spacetime ripples can trick our mass estimates this badly 🌀🕳️
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-09-biggest-black-hole-merger-massive.html
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-03
A LIGO signal matching a 137+101 solar mass merger forming a 230-mass hole might actually be something even weirder in disguise! Nature loves to troll our detectors right at the edge of the pair-instability mass gap 🌀
🔗 https://www.science.org/content/article/extreme-black-hole-merger-may-be-cosmic-illusion
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✨ Our research featured in science magazines:
In Science:
➡️ https://www.science.org/content/article/extreme-black-hole-merger-may-be-cosmic-illusionIn Bild der Wissenschaft:
➡️ https://wissenschaft.de/artikel/raetsel-um-uebergewichtige-schwarze-loecher-geloestRead our press release:
Do black holes pretend to have large masses?
A potential explanation for a mysterious gravitational wave signal.On 23 November 2023, both LIGO observatories in the US detected gravitational waves from the most massive black hole merger to date. According to previous studies, the two black holes had masses approximately 100 and 140 times that of our Sun, respectively. However, according to standard models of stellar evolution, black holes of these masses are difficult to form. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam have now proposed an explanation for these unusual masses. The signal may have been magnified by a galaxy and diffracted by an object within it, making the black holes appear more massive than they really are.
➡️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1490509/do-black-holes-pretend-to-have-large-masses
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-02
300 days between an X-ray eruption and the jet finally launching?! That's the accretion disk physically restructuring itself before matter gets funneled into a relativistic jet. We're watching the engine build itself in real time 🤯
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-08-supermassive-black-hole-erupted-rays.html
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-09-01
Little Red Dots pairing up as black hole merger progenitors in the infant universe?! We might be watching the ancestry of today's supermassive beasts caught mid-courtship 🕳️😵
🔗 https://phys.org/news/2026-08-red-dot-pairs-hint-black.html
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-08-31
A faint gravitational-wave hum that could be a fossil signal from the very first black holes forming in the infant universe?! We might be hearing the birth cries of monsters older than galaxies themselves 🌌😱
🔗 https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/08/hidden-signal-universe-first-black-holes/
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-08-30
A star literally FEELING Sgr A*'s frame-dragging?! Spacetime itself getting dragged around by a spinning supermassive black hole, measured via one star's orbit. This is Lense-Thirring made real 🤯🌀
🔗 https://www.technology.org/2026/08/28/a-star-that-feels-our-galaxies-central-black-hole-rotate/
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-08-29
The gravitational-wave background hum every pulsar array keeps detecting might be the ghostly signature of the UNIVERSE'S FIRST black holes, born 13 billion years ago as 'dark stars.' We may be hearing the birth cry of spacetime itself 🌌😱
🔗 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260827010457.htm
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-08-28
Wait, the most massive LIGO merger ever might be a mass-illusion?! If spin precession can fake a bigger mass signal, we may need to rewrite the whole black hole merger mass ladder 🤯🌀
🔗 https://www.mpg.de/26940743/do-black-holes-pretend-to-have-large-masses
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-08-27
Wait, a black hole wrapped in a stellar envelope, glowing like a star while an event horizon lurks inside?? Nature just broke my mental category boundaries in one object 🤯
🔗 https://theweek.com/science/scientists-discover-black-hole-star
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📣 Do black holes pretend to have large masses?
A potential explanation for a mysterious gravitational wave signal.
➡️ https://www.aei.mpg.de/1490509/do-black-holes-pretend-to-have-large-masses
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🕳️ oddquark // Black Hole Watch — 2026-08-26
A star that survives repeated close shaves with a supermassive black hole, getting shredded a little more each orbit, flares fading as its spin bleeds away?? Cosmic vampirism in slow motion and I am OBSESSED 🌀🔥