Einstein And Hawking's Black Hole Predictions Confirmed After Groundbreaking Cosmic Collision

Decades-old predictions from Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking have finally been validated thanks to a groundbreaking observation of a black hole collision.

Back in January, astronomers witnessed two massive black holes smashing together with an unprecedented level of detail, offering clear evidence that the theories long suggested by the two legendary physicists were correct.

The dramatic cosmic event, officially named GW250114, was detected with the help of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which operates two facilities based in Louisiana and Washington.

The observatories picked up faint gravitational waves, ripples in the very fabric of space, generated as the two black holes spiraled into each other and finally merged, according to CNN.

Einstein first predicted the existence of these waves in 1915 as part of his general theory of relativity. He described them as the only way scientists on Earth could detect the collision of black holes billions of light-years away.

Still, Einstein believed at the time that the signals would be far too faint for human technology to ever detect, and he did not expect that scientists would one day be able to measure them directly.

Two black holes have collided Getty Images

In 1971, Stephen Hawking expanded on this work with his own idea, suggesting that when two black holes combine, the total surface area of the resulting black hole can never be smaller than that of the two that formed it.

That theory lingered for decades until, in September 2015, LIGO recorded gravitational waves for the first time in history. The breakthrough earned the three researchers behind the technology a Nobel Prize and gave science what some have called a “black hole telescope.”

Now, a decade after that moment, researchers are celebrating once again, this time with an even sharper look at black holes colliding and merging in deep space.

Maximiliano Isi, an astrophysicist at Columbia University and the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City, explained that the two black holes involved each had masses roughly 30 to 35 times greater than our sun, and that both were spinning slowly.

"The black holes were about 1 billion light-years away, and they were orbiting around each other in almost a perfect circle," Isi explained. "The resulting black hole was around 63 times the mass of the sun, and it was spinning at 100 revolutions per second."

The discovery goes to prove both Hawking's and Einstein's theories Santi Visalli/Getty Images

He added: "But now, because the instruments have improved so much since then, we can see these two black holes with much greater clarity, as they approached each other and merged into a single one."

According to Isi, this discovery provides scientists with a completely new way of looking at the “dynamics of space and time” itself.

"Yes, black holes are very mysterious, complex and have important implications to the evolution of the universe," Isi said, "but mathematically we think they should be fully described by just two numbers."

"Everything there is to know about them should come from how big the black hole is — or what its mass is — and how fast it's rotating."

To measure this, scientists used LIGO to detect a distinctive “ringing” effect—like vibrations rippling through space after the collision.

He broke it down further by saying: "If you have a bell and you strike it with a hammer, it will ring."

It comes down to the waves they give off Getty Images

"The pitch and duration of the sound, the characteristics of the sound, tell you something about what the bell is made of. With black holes, something similar happens — they ring in gravitational waves."

"We identified two components of this ringing, and that allowed us to test that this black hole really is consistent with being described by just two numbers, mass and rotation," Isi explained. "And this is fundamental to our understanding of how space and time works — that these black holes should be featureless, in some way. It's the first time we are able to see this so compellingly."