A research group led by the Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE) at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) has, for the first time, determined both the speed and direction of the recoil of a newly formed black hole created by the collision of two others. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, provide fresh insights into some of the most extreme events in the cosmos.

Gravitational waves (GWs) are ripples in spacetime that propagate outward from their sources at the speed of light, carrying information about the violent processes that generated them. They open an entirely new observational channel, enabling scientists to study astrophysical events that emit no light – such as black-hole mergers – as well as to gain deeper understanding of phenomena that do, including supernovae and neutron-star collisions.

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A research group led by the Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE) at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) has, for the first time, determined both the speed and direction of the recoil of a newly formed black hole created by the collision of two others. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, provide fresh insights into some of the most extreme events in the cosmos.

Gravitational waves (GWs) are ripples in spacetime that propagate outward from their sources at the speed of light, carrying information about the violent processes that generated them. They open an entirely new observational channel, enabling scientists to study astrophysical events that emit no light – such as black-hole mergers – as well as to gain deeper understanding of phenomena that do, including supernovae and neutron-star collisions.