Another gravitational wave detected

Source: Science News                                                                

The Ligo/Virgo collaboration just published a paper describing the detection of the third gravitational wave!! I won't try to compete with the many very well written blogs around the world describing the event and its astrophysical implications. See for example:

• LIGO/Virgo (easy to understand)
• LIGO/Virgo press-release (nice animations)
• Science News
• The Conversation
• etc.

​Obviously the best source of information is always the original paper: B.P. Abbott et al. (Ligo and Virgo Collaborations, PRL 118, 221101 (2017)
Also note that another crucial piece of information has been published at the same time: the full history of the searches for a coincident (or delayed afterglow-like) signal as reported in a large set of GCN-Notices. A significant number of observatories around the world and across the full electromagnetic spectrum, as well as both major high-energy neutrino telescopes, i.e. incl. ANTARES ;-), reacted to the alert sent out by Virgo/Ligo shortly after the detection of the event in early January 2017. Unfortunately none has detected significant emission...
For various reasons we were not able to follow this event with H.E.S.S.. Some details about our preparations for events like this are given here: Multimessenger searches

Reconstructed masses of the two black holes detected via the gravitational waves emitted during their merger. From B.P. Abbott et al. (Ligo and Virgo Collaborations, PRL 118, 221101 (2017)

Chart showing the black holes detected by gravitational waves in comparison to previously known high-mass binary systems seen in X-rays. From APOD.