A team of Manitoba scientists played a role in an international project that recently unveiled the merging of two massive black holes billions of light years away from Earth. Dr. Samar Safi-Harb, an astrophysicist and Canada Research Chair in Extreme Astrophysics at the University of Manitoba, and her group are part of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA initiative, which disclosed evidence of the largest binary black hole ever detected.
The surprising aspect of this discovery, initially recorded in November 2023, was the extraordinary speed at which each black hole was rotating before colliding, nearing the maximum theoretical limit, according to Safi-Harb. Although her team was not directly involved in this specific finding, they are part of the global community of researchers contributing to LIGO’s operations in the United States.
Among the team members are postdoctoral fellow Nathan Steinle, who specializes in gravitational wave astrophysics, and Labani Mallick, who focuses on electromagnetic observations of black holes. Additionally, PhD student Neil Doerksen is dedicated to enhancing detector sensitivity for gravitational wave technology, supervised by UM alumnus Michael Landry, the head of the LIGO observatory in Washington.
The researchers study extreme phenomena such as extreme temperatures, gravity, and magnetic fields exhibited by astrophysical systems associated with stellar deaths. These events give insights into the origins of heavy elements in the universe, like calcium, gold, and platinum, created through stellar explosions in space.
Black holes are born when massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycles, forming incredibly dense objects with intense gravity that even light cannot escape. Traditional telescopes cannot directly observe black holes due to their invisibility, prompting scientists to study their effects on surrounding matter indirectly.
While X-ray telescopes help infer black hole presence through gravitational interactions with nearby objects, detecting black hole collisions requires specialized tools like LIGO. This observatory, based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, captures gravitational wave signals generated by accelerating objects like black holes, confirming over 300 black hole collisions to date.
The latest discovery, known as GW231123, involves black holes with masses exceeding 100 times that of the sun, culminating in a merged mass of around 225 solar masses. This event falls within the intermediate mass black hole category, shedding light on the formation of such massive entities contrary to standard stellar evolution predictions.
The study contributes to understanding the origins of celestial objects and their roles in cosmic evolution, highlighting the interconnected nature of black hole mergers and galaxy formation in dense environments. This research provides valuable insights into the mysteries of the universe and our place within it.
