LIGO's twin black holes might have been born inside a single star
Tuesday, February 23, 2016 - 17:00
in Astronomy & Space
On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves from the merger of two black holes 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun. Such an event is expected to be dark, but the Fermi Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst just a fraction of a second after LIGO's signal. New research suggests that the two black holes might have resided inside a single, massive star whose death generated the gamma-ray burst.