<2>Scientists Just Doubled Our Catalog of Black Hole and Neutron Star Collisions
<3>Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog-4.0: A New Era in Astrophysics
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has been at the forefront of detecting colliding black holes since 2015, as noted by Space.com. Since then, LIGO and its partner gravitational wave detectors Virgo in Italy and KAGRA (Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) in Japan have detected a multitude of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, merging neutron stars, and even the odd “mixed merger” between a black hole and a neutron star.
<3>New Discoveries in the Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog-4.0
During the first three observing runs of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA, scientists had only “heard” 90 potential gravitational wave sources. However, the new data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration includes 128 more gravitational wave sources, some incredibly distant. The Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog-4.0 (GWTC-4) was collected during the fourth observational run of these gravitational wave detectors