LIGO–Virgo announces 'bumper crop' of gravitational-wave detections - physicsworld.com

While these 39 signals have been public knowledge for some time – indeed we have covered several of them in Physics World – this announcement from LIGO-Virgo comes as the detections are described in papers that have been submitted for peer review.

Most of the 39 new signals appear to come from the merger of two black holes, but the haul also includes the second-ever signal received from a pair of merging neutron stars (“LIGO–Virgo claims another neutron-star merger”) and also what could be the first-ever signal from the merger of a black hole and a neutron star (“Black-hole–neutron-star merger may have been spotted by LIGO–Virgo”).

Also included in the 39 is the gravitational-wave signal from the most massive merger of two black holes ever seen (“LIGO–Virgo spots its most massive black hole merger so far”).

This was the topic of a Physics World Weekly podcast in September that featured gravitational-wave expert Laura Nuttall (“Why that massive black-hole merger is important…”).