What is a Natal Kick? Scientists Measure it for the First Time
The universe is full of mysteries. Recently, scientists achieved a first-ever breakthrough: they measured the speed and direction of a “natal kick” — a powerful push that a newborn black hole gets after a collision. This discovery helps us better understand how black holes grow, move, and shape the universe.
In 2019, researchers detected a gravitational wave signal called GW190412. It came from two black holes colliding billions of light-years away.
Normally, when two black holes merge, the result is a bigger, heavier black hole. But in this case, the two colliding black holes were unequal in size — one was about 29.7 times the Sun’s mass and the other was 8.4 times the Sun’s mass.
Because of this imbalance, the new black hole was kicked like a football. This push, called a natal kick, sent it speeding through space at nearly 179,600 kilometres per hour (111,600 miles per hour). That’s so fast that the black hole likely escaped from the star cluster where it was born.
When black holes collide, they send out gravitational waves. These waves carry information about:
By studying the signal GW190412 from Earth using detectors like LIGO in the US and Virgo in Italy, scientists could calculate the speed and direction of the kick. This was the first time a natal kick had been measured directly, instead of just simulated on computers.
Understanding natal kicks is very important for astronomy:
Astrophysicists now want to:
As one researcher put it, this is one of the rare cosmic events we can fully reconstruct. Each new discovery opens another window into the mysteries of the universe.
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