Scientists Have Recorded the Sound of Two Black Holes Colliding, and You Can Hear It Too

Something happened 3,000 million years ago1 that changed the composition of our prodigious universe forever. Two huge black holes collided, resulting in an intense explosion and forming a solitary object 49 times more massive than our sun.

The explosion formed and released energy twice the mass of our sun in a fraction of a second. This sent waves of gravitation so powerful that they altered the structure of space-time itself. A super-massive black hole emerged in the aftermath. Scientists were recently able to detect this cataclysmic collision, and are learning more about black holes and the cosmos as a result.

The gravitational wave observatory of the National Science Foundation made these detections. The installation is called the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). It is led by an international group of scientists, including some from NASA, MIT and Caltech.

LIGO has two different locations, one in Hanford, Washington State and the other near Livingston, Louisiana. They are intentionally 1,800 miles (about 2,896 km) apart. The waves of gravity were incredibly subtle. They altered space in and around the Earth in just a fraction of the width of a proton. However, the instrumentation is so sensitive that it can pick up such delicate occurrences.

An interferometer is basically a laser-based measuring instrument that can detect gravitational waves and locate their source. By carefully observing light and space with two gigantic interferometers, researchers can learn much more about gravity, one of the four major forces in the universe. LIGO scientists say that these dual observatories are at the same level of complexity as the large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. LIGO is able to make discoveries that will impact quantum mechanics, relativity, astronomy and even nuclear physics.

This is the third time that gravity waves have been detected using instruments on Earth and the first direct measurement. We now know more about stellar mass black holes, how they form, the areas they inhabit and how two of them can end up in a spinning dance of death and fusion. In this particular case, one was about 30 times larger than the sun and the other 19 times longer. The bigger one drew the smaller one inside.

As they approached, they began to swirl around each other, in a waltz that lasted aeons, releasing gravitational waves as they went, drawing closer and closer until they joined, causing an explosion of astronomical proportions. It sounds dark romantic. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The researchers were even able to capture the sounds associated with their final embrace.


So what exactly is a black hole? A stellar black hole of mass is the remains of a once powerful star. Astronomers believe that when a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, it implodes. A smaller star, say the size of our sun, will eventually expand into a red giant and then collapse into a white dwarf.

With much bigger stars, something different happens. The pressure outward once you push the energy into space is gone. As a result, the gravitational pulling pressure is no longer compensated and thus begins to pull everything in with tremendous force. The gravitational waves that resulted in the union of these two black holes were detected in September and December 2015. Researchers have been studying them ever since.

Laura Cadonati, a member of LIGO's Georgia Tech team, told National Geographic: "Before our discoveries, we did not even know for certain that these black holes existed." Also before this, astronomers thought they could not get more than 10 solar masses. These new discoveries are much more massive.

One theory is that such black holes came from stars composed mostly of helium and hydrogen. These gases are stable and lose little mass over time. When the star expires, more mass is involved in the implosion, making the event much more powerful.


The LIGO team carefully studied the gravitational waves detected. Of these, they could determine in which direction each black hole was rotating before the collision and the axis of each. From there, the scientists theorized that these could have been sister stars. Their remains dance orbs from the darkest darkness, spinning among themselves as predators, until the greatest swallows the smallest.

However, some data suggest that these stars were actually far apart, initial And eventually found themselves in the orbit of each, with the largest drawing the smallest in. Scientists hope that these results will give them a better understanding of the stars, how they develop more, and more about stellar clusters. They also hope to get ideas if they can, about the existence of dark matter. Einstein predicted such gravitational waves a century ago, while formulating relativity. But he thought the effect was so tiny, we could never measure it.