Overview

• A study published Sept. 9 in Nature Astronomy reports the first direct measurement of a newborn black hole's recoil following a merger.
• Analysis of higher-order gravitational-wave modes from an unequal-mass binary enabled a full 3D reconstruction of the remnant's motion.
• The remnant moved at about 50 km/s (31 mi/s), a speed the team says can eject it from its likely globular-cluster birthplace.
• The GW190412 signal was detected by LIGO and Virgo on April 12, 2019, at a distance of roughly 2.4 billion light-years.
• An international team led by the University of Santiago de Compostela also released an audible sonification and aims to apply the technique to more events.