‘Ringing’ black hole backs Einstein and Hawking theories

Astronomers have detected a collision between two black holes in unprecedented detail, offering the clearest view yet into the nature of these cosmic oddities and confirming long-held predictions made by legendary physicists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

The event, dubbed GW250114, became known in January when researchers spotted it with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — a set of two identical instruments located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The instruments detected gravitational waves, faint ripples in space-time produced by the two black holes slamming into each other.

Searching for gravitational waves, phenomena predicted in 1915 as part of Einstein’s theory of relativity, is the only way to identify black hole collisions fro