Astrophysicists have suggested that in star clusters on the outskirts of galaxies, black holes are continuously merging, giving rise to more and more massive objects.
The gravitational waves detected by the LIGO detector generated a merger, the event that ended the evolution of a system of two black holes orbiting each other. Energy from the merger of two such objects is released, according to the theory of relativity, in the form of gravitational waves - perturbations of space-time, so powerful that sensitive interferometers on Earth felt it.
An international team of physicists led by MIT's Carl Rodriguez has suggested that black holes can coalesce more than once, creating holes that are more massive than those formed by the gravitational collapse of massive stars. "Mergers of the second generation" should, according to scientists, take place on the outskirts of galaxies, in star clusters consisting of thousands and sometimes millions of stars.
“We believe that in clusters of a huge number of stars, a lot of black holes are born, which gradually - and rather quickly - form binary systems, merge into one large black hole, and then new black holes - products of the merger - find themselves a new pair and, merging with it, they form even more massive black holes,”explains Rodriguez.
If LIGO or other gravitational observatories detect a gravitational wave from a black hole with a mass greater than 50 solar masses, the chances are high that this object formed in a cluster with a high density of stars and black holes, the Rodriguez group said. Scientists published their calculations in Physical Review Letters, briefly described on the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.