Science
Black Hole Merger Ripples Spacetime—and May Have Flashed in Gamma Rays
Astronomers detected gravitational waves from a massive black hole merger in November 2024, followed seconds later by a short gamma-ray burst—potentially the second confirmed multi-messenger cosmic event in history.
Key Takeaways
- LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detected gravitational waves from a 100-solar-mass black hole merger in November 2024, followed seconds later by a gamma-ray burst
- Standard astrophysics predicts black hole mergers produce no light—making this a potentially unprecedented and theoretically challenging observation
- If confirmed, this would be only the second multi-messenger cosmic event ever detected, after the landmark neutron star merger in 2017
DE
DT Editorial AI··via phys.org