About four new gravitational wave detections were announced at the Gravitational Waves Physics and Astronomy Workshop, held at the University of Maryland, USA. Thus, now the total number of detected gravitational-wave events is 11 events, counted from the first discovery that took place in 2015.
Ten of these events are collisions of black holes, and one event is characterized as a collision of neutron stars, representing the dense remains of the exploding star.
These news reinforce our belief that the discovery of gravitational waves is not false because recently, at the end of October, an article appeared in the journal New Scientist calling into question the correctness of the detection of gravitational-wave events.
Detection of a gravitational-wave event can not be conducted with 100 percent confidence. The probability of false detection is determined by the frequency with which such an event may occur, which will simulate a gravitational-wave event. Therefore, when the gravitational waves are detected, scientists are assigned a level of statistical significance: for example, if an event that can simulate a gravitational wave event occurs in the universe at a frequency of 1000 times, then the probability that the signal of such character detected by us several times in a row relates precisely to the gravitational-wave event, very high. If the frequency of occurrence in the universe of a simulating event is rather high: for example, if this event occurs with the frequency once a month, then the discovery is considered unreliable. All conducted by the teams of gravity-wave observatories LIGO and VIRGO detection are considered reliable.
Now the scientific teams of the observatory LIGO and VIRGO have completed the analysis of all data received from September 2015. According to the analysis, 8 of the 20 original black holes had masses between 30 and 40 masses of the Sun, 6 black holes had masses of 20 to 30 masses of the Sun, three black holes had masses of the order of 10-20 masses of our luminescence, and only two black holes had small masses , which make up 7-8 masses of our star.
And only one black hole had before the collision a huge mass of 50 masses of the Sun – which makes it the largest black hole whose collision with another black hole (mass 34 masses of the Sun) became the source of gravitational waves recorded by observatories LIGO and VIRGO. This event, GW170729, was recorded on July 29, 2017, and it happened at a distance of over 5 billion light years from us. Despite the weak signal, this event is one of the most powerful gravity-wave events registered so far, the report’s authors emphasized.
The most powerful gravitational wave event has been discovered
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