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PARIS: Scientists have detected the “fingerprints” of a black hole’s event horizon — the boundary from which nothing can escape — for the first time, according to research published on Wednesday.
The discovery was made by studying ripples in space-time called gravitational waves that were created when two black holes violently smashed into each other. A black hole’s event horizon is known as the “point of no return” because not even light can avoid being swallowed into its darkness.
This has made them incredibly difficult to learn anything about. However there is one event of such cataclysmic violence that it could offer a chance to glimpse this extreme phenomenon — when two black holes merge into one.
When this cosmic death spiral occurs, it shoots gravitational waves across the universe which scientists have been detecting for the last decade. For the new research published in Nature, an international team of researchers analysed data from the strongest gravitational wave ever recorded, known as GW250114, detected by the LIGO observatory in January 2025.
