Oval orbit casts new light on black hole - neutron star mergers
Breakthrough discovery provides new clues about how these celestial bodies find each other.
Artist’s impression of an eccentric neutron star–black hole binary. The neutron star’s path is shown in blue and the black hole’s motion in orange as the two objects orbit each other. The eccentricity shown here is exaggerated compared to the real system, GW200105, to make the effect on the orbital motion clearer.
© Geraint Pratten, Royal Society University Research Fellow, University of Birmingham
Scientists have uncovered the first robust evidence of a black hole and a neutron star colliding while orbiting each other in an oval path rather than a perfect circle, just before merging. This finding challenges long-standing assumptions about how these cosmic pairs form and evolve. Today, researchers from the University of Birmingham, the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Read the full press release by the University of Birmingham here.
