The newly measured gravitational waves came from a collision that formed a black hole weighing 63 times the mass of the Sun and spinning at 100 revolutions per second. Thanks to advanced instrumentation and analysis methods, scientists were able to track the entire sequence of the merger, from the first violent crash to the faint ringing of the final black hole settling into equilibrium.
"This is the clearest view yet of the nature of black holes," said Isi, also a professor at Columbia University. "We've found some of the strongest evidence yet that astrophysical black holes are the black holes predicted from Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity."
The clarity of the new signals allowed researchers to probe two long-standing theoretical ideas. First, they confirmed that the final black hole was a "Kerr black hole," described solely by its mass and spin - a conjecture dating back to Roy Kerr's 1963 solution to Einstein's equations. Second, they found strong confirmation of Hawking's area theorem, which states that a black hole's event horizon can never shrink.
The results, published in Physical Review Letters, bolster connections between black hole physics and thermodynamics, where the growth of a black hole's horizon mirrors the second law of thermodynamics: entropy must not decrease. Such parallels may ultimately provide clues toward reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics.
"With this new detection, we have an exquisitely detailed view of the signal both before and after the black hole merger," Isi explained. Farr added, "Listening to the tones emitted by these black holes is our best hope for learning about the properties of the extreme space-times they produce."
With gravitational wave detectors expected to improve tenfold in the next decade, researchers anticipate even more precise insights into the fundamental nature of space and time.
Research Report:GW250114: Testing Hawking's Area Law and the Kerr Nature of Black Holes
Related Links
Simons Foundation
Understanding Time and Space
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