Formation of merging black holes and neutron stars
Gravitational-wave detectors have recorded hundreds of mergers of black holes and neutron stars. How these pairs formed, and why some masses appear where theory forbids them, is open.
Why it matters
The merging population records how massive stars live and die and how dense star clusters evolve.
Review
M. Mapelli, Formation channels of single and binary stellar-mass black holes, Handbook of Gravitational Wave Astronomy (Springer), 2021. https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.00699 reference checked
Timestamp record
- Signed record
- daba472bb0b7…
- Public log
- Entry 31, in checkpoint 2,123
- In the log by
- Block 969,698, 2026-10-03
This text was in the PubPhys log by that date. The date says nothing about when the problem was first posed.