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New Population of Binary Black Holes

LIGO has discovered a new population of black holes with masses that are larger than what had been seen before with X-ray studies alone (purple). The three confirmed detections by LIGO (GW150914, GW151226, GW170104), and one lower-confidence detection (LVT151012), point to a population of stellar-mass binary black holes that, once merged, are larger than 20 solar masses—larger than what was known before.

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Date
June 1, 2017
ID
ligo20170601c
Type
Chart
Credit
LIGO/Caltech/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)
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