"Linking Subatomic and Massive: Evidence of Dark Matter in Black Hole Mergers"

Two independent teams have shown that gravitational waves emanating from the distorted remnants of black hole mergers should interact with themselves. By including these nonlinear effects in their models, the teams found they could replicate gravitational wave signals from simulated “ringing” black holes up to 100 times more accurately than previous approaches. The results could have important implications for astronomers’ ability to probe the interior structures of black holes from the GW signals they emit during ringdowns and enable researchers to test Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity in the most extreme environments known to astrophysics.