Since September 14, 2015, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves, the observatory has been making history. Cornell astrophysicists Saul Teukolsky and Larry Kidder earned a share in the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics - a $3 million award - for their contributions to the project.
Now, on the 10th anniversary of LIGO's first discovery, the LIGO-VIRGO-KAGRA team has announced a black hole merger similar to its first detection. However, thanks to a decade's worth of technological advances improving the detector sensitivity, the signal is dramatically clearer, allowing unprecedented tests of General Relativity to be performed.
The research is described in "GW250114: testing Hawking's area law and the Kerr nature of black holes," published Sept. 10 in Physical Review Letters. Teukolsky is a co-author, along with over 1,200 members of the collaboration.
By analyzing the frequencies of gravitational waves emitted by the merger of the black holes, the team was able to provide the best observational evidence captured to date for what is known as the black hole area theorem. This idea was put forth by Stephen Hawking in 1971 and says that the total surface areas of black holes cannot decrease.
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