International conference on Atomic, Moleculer and Optical Physics: August 2025

Wednesday, 13 August 2025

How The Largest Black Hole Merger In History Challenges Its Physics

The revolutionary discovery was made using data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States.

Astronomers have detected the largest black hole merger ever, and it has challenged their understanding of such formations. The event, designated GW231123, was initially detected on November 23, 2023, by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration.

Two enormous black holes, around 100 and 140 times the mass of the Sun, collided in this cosmic collision to create a new black hole - 225 times more massive than the Sun, per the Astronomy Magazine.

Since supernova physics usually disturbs progenitor stars in the 60-130 solar mass "mass gap," black holes in that range are not likely to develop via regular stellar collapse.

And GW231123 stands out among those 300 black hole mergers for reasons other than simply being the greatest massive collision.

"This is the largest and most massive black hole binary ever detected through gravitational waves, and it poses a real challenge to our understanding of black hole formation," LIGO Scientific Collaboration member Professor Mark Hannam of Cardiff University asserted.

The distance of GW231123 from Earth is unknown; it may be as far away as 12 billion light-years, according to Professor Hannam. The speed at which the two black holes are orbiting one another is another unexpected aspect of GW231113.

The results showed that the two merging black holes were spinning close to the maximum allowed by general relativity, in accordance with Einstein's theory. It is, thus, quite challenging to extract exact features and to model waveforms with such high angular momentum.

The black holes are probably spinning as rapidly as is practically feasible, according to Dr Charlie Hoy of Portsmouth University. "GW231123 poses a serious threat to our knowledge of how black holes emerge," Dr Hoy said.

According to Professor Zoltan Haiman of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, who was not involved in the project, the black holes in GW231123 were therefore thought to be leftovers of one or even several generations of previous mergers.

GW231123 was discovered by a group of astronomers when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected faint ripples in space-time caused by two black holes colliding. Scientists refer to these disturbances as gravitational waves.

The event was detected during the fourth observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) network, which consists of Japan's KAGRA, the Virgo detector in Italy, and the LIGO observatories in the United States, CNN reported.

GW190521, which was only 60 per cent as large as GW231123, held the previous record for the largest black hole merger ever recorded. In the future, scientists may discover even more gigantic mergers.

Edited by:NDTV News Desk

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Saturday, 9 August 2025

Are Experiments in Space More Valuable Than Those on Earth?

CBS research finds that NASA-sponsored experiments aboard the International Space Station lead to significantly more cited papers and patents, especially when public institutions are involved.

The International Space Station (ISS) is often celebrated for its symbolic and strategic importance in human space exploration. Over the past two decades, it has also emerged as a hub for invaluable scientific and technological research. Since 2000, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has sponsored more than 1,300 experiments aboard the ISS, ranging from biomedical studies to materials science to commercial technology testing.

These space-based experiments in microgravity have generated hundreds of scientific papers and patents, yet until now, no study has systematically assessed whether this research actually delivers more value than equivalent work conducted on Earth. Are experiments in space inherently more impactful? And if so, what kind of research and which types of collaborations drive that impact?

New research by Columbia Business School PhD candidate Max Wang and Ken Savin, chief scientist at Redwire, which helped fund the study, offers the first quantitative answers. By matching ISS experiments to peer-reviewed publications and patents and comparing them to similar Earth-based outputs from the same researchers, the study finds that space research, especially when publicly funded and NASA-affiliated, consistently produces more influential scientific and economic outcomes.

Key TakeawaysAll else equal, papers and patents from ISS experiments are cited significantly more often than comparable work done by the same researchers on Earth.
The most influential outcomes come from experiments involving NASA and public research institutions.
Commercial involvement in ISS research is growing, though private experiments show less impact in citation metrics.
ISS-based papers receive up to 63% more citations; ISS patents, up to 82% more.
Scientific productivity increased after the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) took over ISS Lab management in 2011.

How the Study Compared ISS and Earth-Based Research

To assess the ISS’s contributions, the authors gathered data on 1,339 NASA-sponsored experiments conducted in the U.S. Orbital Segment primarily under the auspices of the ISS National Lab between 2000 and 2022, as well as information about the 183 U.S. companies participating in these experiments. They identified 384 peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences publications and 98 patents connected to these experiments. Each ISS-based output was matched with an “Earth counterfactual” carefully selected papers and patents that are produced by the same set of authors and inventors.

This method allowed the authors to isolate the effect of doing research in space by controlling for factors like individual author productivity and reputation. They used citation counts as a measure of scientific and economic impacts, drawing data from PubMed and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Statistical models controlled for variables such as coauthor count, research focus, and publication year.

NASA and Public Partnerships Drive the Most Influence

The study found that space-based research outperformed its Earth-based counterparts. On average, ISS papers received 41% more citations than similar Earth papers; public-sector ISS papers received 63% more. Similarly, ISS patents received 67% more citations than comparable Earth-based inventions, and those stemming from public collaborations saw an 82% increase.

Private ISS research, by contrast, showed no statistically significant difference in citation impact. This suggests that commercial projects in space may be aimed more at proprietary development than widely disseminated knowledge. While private-sector participation has increased since CASIS took over management in 2011, the most influential scientific and technological outputs still come from public partnerships with NASA.

Why Space-Based Research Delivers More Value

Wang and Savin’s findings offer new, data-driven insight into the real-world returns of space-based science. As debate swirls around federal funding cuts to NASA, their work highlights the importance of continued public investment in space research, which drives critical knowledge and innovation on Earth.

By showing that experiments conducted in space produce more cited papers and patents than similar work on Earth, the study may help reshape how the public and elected officials think about the value of publicly-funded science. The findings suggest that space research is not just a frontier of exploration, but also a practical engine of innovation that delivers measurable benefits back to society.

This matters especially as policymakers weigh competing priorities for science and technology funding. In a climate of fiscal scrutiny, the ISS National Lab stands out as a platform where public dollars are translating into massive value.
Source: Jonathan Sperling

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