Overview

• LIGO’s Hanford and Livingston sites captured GW250114 on January 14, 2025 with a signal‑to‑noise ratio about 80, the clearest gravitational‑wave detection to date.
• The merger involved two roughly 32‑solar‑mass black holes forming a remnant of about 63 solar masses spinning near 100 revolutions per second.
• Measurements show the remnant’s horizon area grew from roughly 240,000 km² to about 400,000 km², providing strong confirmation of Hawking’s 1971 area theorem.
• Analysts isolated multiple ringdown tones from the remnant for the first time in such data, with frequencies and damping matching the Kerr prediction that black holes are defined by mass and spin alone.
• The peer‑reviewed results from the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration appear in Physical Review Letters, with confidence in key tests rising to 99.999% compared with earlier 2015‑signal studies, according to the team.