The ultimate space collision just happened - and it’s right out of Einstein’s playbook

Albert Einstein, the father of the theory of general relativity, never thought that here on Earth we would be able to detect the collision of black holes. That’s because the only way to do so is observing gravitational waves.

But in 2015, the impossible became possible with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Since then, in conjunction with it two sister observatories, Virgo and KAGRA, over 300 black hole merger events have been observed.

Recently though, LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) astronomers published their findings from one of the clearest recordings of the gravitational wave signal from one which was detected in January. The event has been dubbed GW250114 and it allowed them to conduct some of the most rigorous tests to confirm predictions about black holes.

Collision of black holes proves Einstein and Hawking right

“Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the Kerr’s black hole solution have once again been empirically vindicated,” stated Alessandra Buonanno, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and chair of the editorial team of the LVK study. Roy Kerr, a New Zealand mathematician, developed an exact mathematical solution to Einstein’s equations of general relativity to describe the rotation of black holes in 1963.

Scientists were also able to confirm Stephen Hawking’s black hole area theorem which he proposed in 1971. It states that when two black holes merge, the resulting event horizon area of the new black hole cannot be smaller than the total horizon area of its two parent black holes.

How are gravitational waves observed

LIGO is composed of two identical instruments located over 1,800 miles apart with one in Livingston, Louisiana, and the other in Hanford, Washington. The enormous laser interferometers send two identical laser beams down perpendicular L-shaped arms that are 2.5 miles long. A passing gravitational wave will compress and stretch the beam changing the amount of time it takes to travel.

The GW250114 event that reached Earth on 14 January 2025, was a measurable amount of about one thousandth of a proton diameter.

The event occurred around 1.3 billion light years from Earth between two black holes with masses between 30 to 40 times that of our Sun.

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