An international research team has achieved a major advancement in gravitational wave astronomy by successfully detecting 128 new cosmic collision events involving black holes and neutron stars. This discovery has more than doubled the number of known gravitational wave events, marking a key milestone in humanity’s understanding of the universe.
The results come from the latest data release by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration, involving the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the Virgo gravitational wave interferometer, and the KAGRA detector in Kamioka. The newly published Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0) covers the first nine months of the fourth observing run (O4), from May 2023 to January 2024. The catalog has been made available on the arXiv preprint server, highlighting the tremendous success of international scientific collaboration. Gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by massive cosmic events such as black hole and neutron star mergers—were first directly detected in 2015. UK scientists have played a leading role in developing detection and analysis technologies, with long-standing contributions to gravitational wave science supported by multiple institutions. Thanks to recent upgrades, the detectors’ sensitivity has increased by 25%, allowing scientists to observe a much larger volume of the universe and detect more distant and massive black hole mergers.
Dr. Daniel Williams, a researcher at the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow, who led parts of the analysis, stated that this update demonstrates the power of the international gravitational wave detector network and the sophistication of current analysis techniques. Among the 128 new gravitational wave events is the loudest signal to date, GW230814, which provides evidence related to black hole formation and offers new clues about stellar evolution and the details of black hole–neutron star collisions. Dr. Tessa Baker from the University of Portsmouth noted that these new events help refine measurements of the universe’s expansion rate, test general relativity, and confirm that the standard cosmological model remains the best framework for understanding the cosmos. With new telescopes coming online, multi-messenger astronomy approaches are expected to enable even deeper exploration of the fundamental nature of the universe.
