This handout image released by The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics on September 2, 2020, shows a simulation of a Binary black hole merger GW190521 . – It took 7 billion light years to reach us: a massive black hole of a new type, probably resulting from the fusion of two black holes, was directly observed for the first time thanks to gravitational waves, two studies revealed on September 2, 2020.
“This event is a door opening into the cosmic process for the formation of black holes,” co-author Stavros Katsanevas, an astrophysicist at the European Gravitational Observatory, said in an online press conference.A so-called stellar-class black hole forms when a dying star collapses and is typically three to ten solar masses in size.
When they smashed together, eight solar masses’ worth of energy was released, creating one of the most powerful events in the Universe since the Big Bang.