The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, has detected mergers of black holes, and even a couple of neutron star smash-ups. But it hasn’t yet confirmed the signature of a black hole gobbling a neutron star.
That could soon change.
Over the past week, physicists have been buzzing over an Aug. 14 detection made by the twin LIGO detectors in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La., as well as by the European Virgo gravitational-wave detector in Italy. Those L-shaped facilities monitor ever-so-slight fluctuations in laser beams to look for wobbles in spacetime caused by passing gravitational waves.
The types of waves that LIGO and Virgo detect are given off only by violent cosmic events such as supernova explosions and cataclysmic collisions. LIGO’s first black hole detection, made in 2015, earned the Nobel Prize in physics two years later. More such detections have been made since then.
Detecting the first neutron star merger, and matching that event up with multispectral observations from a wide array of telescopes, marked another milestone in 2017. Neutron stars are the super-dense stellar cores that are left behind when stars bigger than our sun burn out and collapse.
Picking up on the collision of a neutron star and a black hole would complete a gravitational-wave trifecta. LIGO’s team thought they might have detected such a smash-up back in April, but the signal was weak and couldn’t be confirmed.
Astronomers say the Aug. 14 detection, known as S190814bv and traced to a source roughly 900 million light-years away, could be the one.
