A new analysis of the gravitational wave signal GW231123, captured by the two LIGO detectors in the United States on November 23, 2023, suggests that gravitational lensing may have distorted the measurements, making two black holes appear much more massive and faster than they really were.
According to this hypothesis, the resulting black hole system from the merger would have about 140 solar masses, instead of the 230 solar masses that were initially estimated based on observations.
The GW231123 signal resulted from the merger of two black holes and continues to intrigue scientists precisely because of its large masses. The existence of these black holes cannot be explained with standard knowledge of stellar evolution, which raises questions about the formation mechanism of these objects.
