Twin black hole mergers offer clues to cosmic evolution, dark matter: scientists

MELBOURNE, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- An international study, including researchers in Australia, has detected "two remarkable black hole collisions," offering new clues to cosmic evolution and dark matter.

The pair of gravitational-wave events GW241011 and GW241110, detected one month apart in late 2024 during the O4b phase of the global LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run, were announced Wednesday by the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, in a partnership between collaborating organizations in Australia and overseas.

Each signal was produced by the violent merger of two rapidly spinning, unequal-mass black holes, forming an even more massive remnant and sending ripples through space-time, each travelling for hundreds of millions to billions of years before reaching Earth, providing a window into how black holes form and evolve.

"Rapidly spinning black holes like those in GW241011 and GW241110 are more than just astrophysical curiosities; they can be used to test the existence of new particles," said Aswathi Pampurayath Subhash from the Australian National University.

"By remaining highly spinning over their long lifetimes, they allow us to rule out a wide range of possible ultralight boson masses, placing new constraints on dark matter and theories beyond the Standard Model," Subhash said.

Researcher Sun Ling from the university said their high spins and unequal masses suggest that they may be second-generation black holes, the products of earlier mergers in dense stellar environments, such as star clusters, revealing how the universe's most extreme objects come to be. Enditem