7 Nov 2021 — The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration has released the largest catalog ever of collisions involving black holes and neutron stars. As detailed in a paper which appeared today on the ArXiv, the Collaboration has detected a further 35 gravitational wave events since the last catalog release in October 2020. These new events were observed between November 2019 and March 2020 and bring to 90 the total number of observed events since LIGO/Virgo operations began.
Of the 35 new events reported here, 32 are most likely mergers involving pairs of black holes. The black holes have a range of sizes, with the most massive around 90 times the mass of our Sun. Several of the resulting black holes that formed from these mergers exceed 100 times the mass of our Sun and are classed as intermediate-mass black holes. Two events contain a black hole/neutron star pair, and a third contains a black hole partnered with either a heavy neutron star or a low-mass black hole.
More information on this updated catalog (GWTC-3) can be found in this news release and on our O3b Catalog detection page.