Physics
LIGO Data Hint That Many Black Holes Were Born When Stars Died Without a Bang
A Caltech-led study of 257 black hole mergers finds a spike at 10 solar masses and a gap at 12 to 16, matching what 'failed supernova' theories predict.
Topic
Gravitational waves
51 stories from Planck Standard. Latest: November 12, 2026.
PhysicsPhysicist Proposes Hunting for Gravitational Waves in the Moon's Tides
A Berlin mathematician adds a gravitational-wave term to lunar tidal models and lists the errors that must be controlled before any leftover signal could count as real.
PhysicsHungarian Team Finds Statistical Sign That Black Holes Get Kicked Out of Their Galaxies
An analysis of about 100,000 quasars shows faster-moving black holes are redder and dustier, as general relativity's recoil prediction implies; the authors say it could mean about half the sample recently merged.
PhysicsForgotten Heavy Neutrino May Explain Why Matter Beat Antimatter, Physicists Say
A Southampton and IIT Kanpur team argues a long-ignored 'decoupled' heavy neutrino could have briefly dominated the early universe and shaped the matter-antimatter imbalance.
PhysicsNew Locking Scheme Using Infrared Light Clears Path for Sharper LIGO Gravitational Wave Mirrors
Australian physicists showed an infrared handover method that works with crystalline mirror coatings that absorb the green light current detectors rely on.
PhysicsAn AI That Designs Physics Experiments Beat Human-Built Setups, Nature Reports
Instead of a chatbot, the method treats lab design as a search problem over lasers, lenses and detectors. It has produced better designs for gravitational-wave detectors, fusion reactors and microscopes.
PhysicsBlack Holes in Higher Dimensions Ring With a Hidden Symmetry That String Theory Breaks
Two Khalifa University mathematicians computed how black holes 'ring' in five to 26 dimensions and found two very different waves that share exactly the same notes, until a string-inspired correction is added.
PhysicsA Black Hole Merger Caught in October 2024 Had a Fast-Spinning 19.6-Solar-Mass Primary
Nine years after proposing the test, a Birmingham–Perimeter team measured how rotation squashed the heavier object in GW241011. Rotating boson stars with quartic self-interactions cannot explain it.
PhysicsTwo Dead Stars Are Circling Each Other Every Six Minutes, and the Orbit Is Shrinking Fast
eRASSU J0608 pulses every 374 seconds. Its orbit is decaying at one of the fastest rates ever measured, which would make it one of the loudest gravitational-wave sources in the sky — if astronomers can work out how far away it is.
PhysicsIf a Black Hole Has 'Hair,' Its Ring Will Wobble One Way and Fade Another
Nagoya University physicists found that hidden matter around a black hole shifts the frequency and the decay rate of its gravitational-wave ringdown by different amounts — a mismatch detectors could look for.
PhysicsA Supermassive Black Hole Is Fleeing Its Galaxy at 1,000 Kilometers a Second
RBH-1 left a trail of newborn stars 202,000 light-years long. A Santa Barbara team worked backward to the merger that threw it out, about 70 million years ago.
PhysicsThey Gave an AI a Bench Full of Lasers and Mirrors. It Returned Experiments Physicists Had Not Thought Of
A Nature paper from Mario Krenn's group shows algorithms designing setups for quantum optics, electron microscopy, gravitational-wave detectors and fusion machines that beat the human versions.
PhysicsThe Biggest Black Hole Merger Ever Detected Just Shrank. A Lens in the Way Made It Look Twice as Heavy
GW231123 was reported as a 190-to-265-solar-mass collision. A Max Planck reanalysis published Thursday says gravitational lensing magnified the signal, and the real total is 100 to 180.
PhysicsThe Low Hum Running Through the Galaxy's Pulsars May Be the Echo of Stars Made of Dark Matter
Colgate physicists calculate that the remnants of hypothetical 'Dark Stars' from cosmic dawn could dominate the gravitational-wave background that pulsar timing arrays have been measuring.
PhysicsAn Off-the-Shelf Thermal Camera Could Let LIGO See 33 Million Light-Years Farther
Physicists at UC Riverside found that photographing the detector's mirrors with a commercial infrared camera solves a heat-warping problem that has quietly capped its sensitivity for years.
PhysicsPhysicists Rewrite Hawking's Black Hole Laws to Work on Real, Ever-Changing Black Holes
A Penn State team led by Abhay Ashtekar has devised a new entropy measure that extends the laws of black hole thermodynamics to objects that grow, merge and evaporate — not just idealized, static ones.
PhysicsPhysicists Build a Quantum Sensor That Cancels Its Own Noise, Clearing a Path to Detect Dark Matter
An Imperial College team paired two clouds of ultracold strontium atoms under a single laser, letting them subtract the vibrations that have long blinded such instruments to faint cosmic signals.
PhysicsGravitational-Wave Hunters Unveil a 390-Collision Catalog, Catching the Clearest Black-Hole 'Ring' Yet
A single 10-month observing run added 161 new detections, nearly doubling the record — and delivered the sharpest gravitational-wave signal ever recorded, along with hints that some black holes are built from earlier black holes.
PhysicsA Strange LIGO Signal May Be the First Real Fingerprint of 'Primordial' Black Holes From the Dawn of Time
Physicists say a collision between two objects lighter than the Sun, detected last November, could point to black holes born in the first instant after the Big Bang — and to the identity of dark matter.
PhysicsA Strange LIGO Signal May Be the First Sign of Black Holes Born at the Dawn of Time
A gravitational wave from an impossibly light object has scientists asking whether primordial black holes could explain dark matter.
PhysicsLIGO's Biggest-Ever Catalog Adds 161 Black Hole Collisions, Pushing Detections to 390
The new LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA release includes the clearest gravitational-wave signal ever recorded and fresh evidence that some black holes are built from the wreckage of earlier mergers.
- Science
Astronomers Devise a Way to Spot Hidden Supermassive Black Hole Pairs by Their Flickering Starlight
Oxford and Max Planck scientists say tightly bound black-hole binaries act as cosmic lenses, magnifying background stars into repeating flashes that betray their presence.
PhysicsBlack Holes May Reveal Dark Matter Secrets Through Gravitational Wave Fingerprints
MIT physicists develop new method to detect dark matter interactions hidden within cosmic collisions, with one LIGO signal showing potential evidence.
- Physics
Gravitational Waves May Carry First Dark Matter Fingerprints From Black Hole Collisions
MIT physicists have developed a new method to search for dark matter signatures in ripples from merging black holes, with one LIGO signal showing promising results.
- Physics
Gravitational Waves May Carry First Fingerprints of Dark Matter from Colliding Black Holes
MIT physicists detect potential dark matter signature in LIGO data, offering new way to study the universe's most mysterious substance.
PhysicsJames Webb and VLT Spot Most Massive Black Hole Pair Ever Found — Two 30-Billion-Solar-Mass Giants Bound for Merger
A starless gulf 3,200 light-years across at the heart of galaxy Abell 402-BCG turns out to be a gravitational scar carved by two ultramassive black holes, together weighing 60 billion suns and headed for an eventual merger LISA may one day hear.
PhysicsGravitational Waves May Have Created Dark Matter in Early Universe
New research suggests ancient ripples in spacetime could have transformed into the invisible particles that shape galaxies today.
- Physics
Scientists Discover Gravitational Waves May Have Created Dark Matter in Early Universe
New research suggests ancient ripples in spacetime could have transformed into particles that became the invisible substance shaping galaxies today.
- Physics
Gravitational Waves May Have Created Dark Matter in Universe's First Moments
New research suggests ancient ripples in spacetime could have transformed into particles that became the invisible substance shaping galaxies today.
- Physics
Scientists Create Ancient Dark Matter Using Gravitational Wave Breakthrough
Researchers discover that spacetime ripples from the Big Bang may have transformed into particles that became the invisible substance shaping galaxies today.
PhysicsGravitational Waves From the Big Bang May Have Created All of the Dark Matter in the Universe
A new paper in Physical Review Letters proposes that stochastic gravitational waves generated in the first moments after the Big Bang could have been converted into dark matter particles — a mechanism never before proposed that could solve one of physics' most fundamental mysteries.
PhysicsScientists Discover Hidden Gravitational Wave Signals in Light Emitted by Atoms
Revolutionary theory proposes detecting cosmic ripples through subtle frequency shifts in atomic light emission, potentially enabling ultra-compact detectors.
PhysicsGravitational Waves May Hide in Plain Sight Within Light Emitted by Atoms
Researchers propose detecting spacetime ripples by observing how they subtly change photon frequencies, potentially enabling ultra-compact gravitational wave detectors.
PhysicsGravitational Waves May Be Hidden in the Light Atoms Emit
Scientists propose revolutionary detection method that could lead to ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems, observing frequency shifts in emitted photons.
- Physics
Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves Hidden in Light From Atoms
Revolutionary new detection method could lead to ultra-compact gravitational wave detectors using cold-atom systems.
- Physics
Scientists Propose Detecting Gravitational Waves Through Atomic Light Emissions
Researchers suggest gravitational waves may subtly alter the frequency of light emitted by atoms, potentially enabling ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems.
- Physics
Gravitational Waves May Be Hidden in Atomic Light, Scientists Propose Revolutionary Detection Method
Stockholm University researchers suggest that gravitational waves subtly alter light emitted by atoms, offering a path to ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems.
- Physics
Scientists Propose Revolutionary Method to Detect Gravitational Waves Through Atomic Light
New theory suggests gravitational waves create detectable frequency shifts in photons emitted by atoms, potentially enabling ultra-compact detectors.
PhysicsAstronomers Detect First Close Pair of Supermassive Black Holes in Death Spiral Set to Merge Within 100 Years
Scientists tracking galaxy Markarian 501 for 23 years found two black holes orbiting each other every 121 days at a separation of just 250–540 AU — a system unprecedented in astronomical history.
- Physics
Record-Breaking Gravitational Wave GW250114 Confirms Hawking's 1971 Black Hole Theorem
The clearest black hole merger ever recorded — with a signal-to-noise ratio nearly three times higher than LIGO's first detection — verified multiple tones predicted by Einstein's general relativity.
- Physics
Scientists Discover How to Detect Gravitational Waves Hidden in Atomic Light
Revolutionary breakthrough could enable ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems, offering new way to observe cosmic events.
- Physics
Scientists Detect Gravitational Waves Hidden in Atomic Light for First Time
Revolutionary discovery shows gravitational waves subtly alter photon frequencies, opening path to ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems.
- Physics
Scientists Discover Gravitational Waves May Be Hidden in the Light Atoms Emit
Researchers propose detecting spacetime ripples by observing how they subtly shift photon frequencies, potentially enabling ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems.
- Physics
Scientists Discover Hidden Gravitational Wave Signals in Atomic Light
Breakthrough research shows gravitational waves can be detected by observing subtle changes in the light emitted by atoms, opening door to compact detectors.
- Physics
Scientists Discover Gravitational Waves Hidden in Light Atoms Emit
Revolutionary detection method could lead to ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems, bypassing need for kilometer-scale instruments.
- Physics
Scientists Create Breakthrough Method to Detect Hidden Ripples in Spacetime
New unified framework could enable LIGO and smaller experiments to test quantum gravity theories much sooner than expected.
- Physics
Scientists Solve Spacetime Fluctuation Mystery With Revolutionary Detection Framework
Researchers create the first unified method to detect tiny gravitational ripples that could unlock quantum gravity secrets using existing technology.
PhysicsScientists Edge Closer to Detecting Hidden Ripples in Spacetime Itself
Breakthrough provides first unified method to search for tiny quantum fluctuations that could reveal how gravity and quantum mechanics connect.
PhysicsScientists Unveil Revolutionary Theory of Universe's Origin Through Quantum Gravity
University of Waterloo researchers propose that the Big Bang's explosive expansion emerges naturally from deeper quantum gravity framework, offering testable predictions.
- Physics
Scientists Discover How Universe's Explosive Birth May Emerge From Quantum Gravity
University of Waterloo researchers propose that Big Bang inflation arises naturally from deeper quantum gravity framework, offering testable predictions for future experiments.
PhysicsAstronomers Release Largest Gravitational Wave Catalog Ever: 218 Detections Including the Heaviest Black Hole Binary in History
The GWTC-4 catalog, led by MIT, adds 128 new events from LIGO's fourth observing run — including a 260-solar-mass merger, the fastest-spinning binary on record, and a new measurement of the universe's expansion rate.
