Mysterious object in the gap – April 05, 2024
Shortly after the start of the fourth observing run, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaborations detected a remarkable gravitational-wave signal.
The LIGO Livingston detector observed the signal, called GW230529, on May 29, 2023, from the merger of a neutron star with an unknown compact object, most likely an unusually light-weight black hole. With a mass of only a few times that of our Sun, the object falls into the “lower mass gap” between the heaviest neutron stars and the lightest black holes. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics contributed to the discovery with accurate waveform models, new data-analysis methods, and sophisticated detector technology. Although this particular event was observed only because of its gravitational waves, it increases the expectation that more such events will also be observed with electromagnetic waves in the future.