Cosmic Vibrations Felt From Black-Hole Merger 3 Billion Light-Years Away

Just Pinned to Domestic and Global News: The void is rocking and rolling with invisible cataclysms. Astronomers said Thursday that they had felt space-time vibrations known as gravitational waves from the merger of a pair of mammoth black holes resulting in a pit of infinitely deep darkness weighing as much as 49 suns some 3 billion light-years from here. This is the third black-hole smashup that astronomers have detected since they started keeping watch on the cosmos back in September 2015 with LIGO the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. All of them are more massive than the black holes that astronomers had previously identified as the remnants of dead stars. In less than two short years the observatory has wrought twin revolutions. It validated Einsteins longstanding prediction that space-time can shake like a bowlful of jelly when massive objects swing their weight around and it has put astronomers on intimate terms with the most extreme objects in his cosmic zoo and the ones so far doing the shaking: massive black holes. We are moving in a substantial way away from novelty towards where we can seriously say we are developing black-hole astronomy said David Shoe
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