{"id":9880,"date":"2026-04-14T17:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T21:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9880"},"modified":"2026-04-14T17:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T21:42:26","slug":"the-beacons-were-lit-a-system-to-detect-and-map-merging-black-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9880","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Beacons Were Lit!\u2019 A System to Detect and Map Merging Black Holes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An international collaboration of astrophysicists that includes researchers from Yale has created and tested a detection system that uses gravitational waves to map out the locations of merging black holes \u2014 known as supermassive black hole binaries \u2014 around the universe.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-9880-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/news.yale.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/2026-02\/Merging%20Black%20Hole%20LOOP.mp4?_=1\" \/><\/video><\/div>\n<p>Such a map would provide a vital new way to explore and understand astronomy and physics, just as X-rays and radio waves did in earlier eras, the researchers say. The new protocol demonstrated by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) offers a detection protocol to populate the map.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur finding provides the scientific community with the first concrete benchmarks for developing and testing detection protocols for individual, continuous gravitational wave sources,\u201d said Chiara Mingarelli, assistant professor of physics in Yale\u2019s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), member of NANOGrav, and corresponding author of a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3847\/2041-8213\/ae3719\">new study in the<em>\u00a0Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers, even a small number of confirmed black hole binaries will enable them to anchor a map of the gravitational wave background. In the months ahead, NANOGrav will continue identifying and locating binaries.<\/p>\n<p>Previous theoretical work led by Mingarelli and collaborators suggested that black hole mergers are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/adce05\">five times more likely to be found in galaxies with a quasar<\/a>, a brightly lit \u201cbeacon\u201d in space fueled by gases falling into a black hole. Informed by this research, the new study details an end-to-end, targeted search framework from continuous gravitational waves from individual black hole merger candidates.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, NANOGrav reported on the discovery of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.yale.edu\/2023\/06\/28\/astrophysicists-present-first-evidence-gravitational-wave-background\">first direct evidence of a background of gravitational waves<\/a>. The discovery suggested that gravitational waves, caused by slowly merging pairs of supermassive black holes, could be detected from Earth within a background field of low-frequency\u00a0energy.<\/p>\n<p>NANOGrav centered its detection methods around pulsars, which are the collapsed cores of massive stars that have exploded. Pulsars, which rotate rapidly, emit precisely timed radio\u00a0signals.<\/p>\n<p>The international collaborators then pivoted to the search for individual waves.<\/p>\n<p>For the new study, a research team led by Mingarelli tested a novel methodology that combines measurements of the gravitational wave background with variable measurements of quasars. She and her colleagues conducted targeted searches for supermassive black hole binaries in 114 active galactic nuclei \u2014 areas in the center of galaxies where a black hole is drawing in matter.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s how they found SDSS J1536+0411 (aka \u201cRohan\u201d) and SDSS J0729+4008 (aka \u201cGondor\u201d) \u2014 named, in part, after locales from J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d novels.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe names come from both people and pop culture,\u201d Mingarelli said. \u201cRohan was first, for Rohan Shivakumar, the Yale student who first analyzed it, and Gondor was next, because, well \u2014 the beacons were lit!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d heroes joined forces after beacons were lit in Gondor and Rohan.<\/p>\n<p>Mingarelli said the discovery offers intriguing possibilities across a range of astrophysics research \u2014 from gravitational wave theory and data analysis to galaxy mergers, and black hole astrophysics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur work has laid out a roadmap for a systemic supermassive black hole binary detection framework,\u201d she said. \u201cWe carried out a systematic, targeted search, developed a rigorous protocol \u2014 and two targets rose to the top as examples motivating follow-up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; Jim Shelton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An international collaboration of astrophysicists that includes researchers from Yale has created and tested a detection system that uses gravitational waves to map out the locations of merging black holes \u2014 known as supermassive black hole binaries \u2014 around the universe. Such a map would provide a vital new way to explore and understand astronomy&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9882,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions\/9882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}