Question 85 from UPSC CSE 2019 - Science & Technology

Question

Recently, scientists observed the merger of giant 'black holes' billions of light-years away from the Earth. What is the significance of this observation?

IASCODEX · Accepted Answer

Correct Option: B. 'Gravitational waves' were detected.

Strategy: Focus on the event described: a merger of giant black holes observed billions of light-years away. The only breakthrough globally linked with such mergers is the detection of gravitational waves, famously confirmed by LIGO. The other options mention unrelated phenomena: Higgs boson pertains to particle physics experiments; wormholes and singularity understanding are hypothetical and not empirically confirmed by this event. Thus, option B fits precisely.

Key Info: Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime caused by accelerating massive objects, such as merging black holes or neutron stars. Their existence was first predicted by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity (1916), but it was only directly confirmed in September 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the USA, an event announced in February 2016. The detected waves originated from a merger of two stellar-mass black holes approximately 1.3 billion light-years away.

This confirmation opened a new era of observational astronomy, allowing scientists to study cosmic events otherwise invisible through electromagnetic radiation (light, X-rays, etc.). The Higgs boson, sometimes called the 'God particle,' is unrelated to black hole mergers—it was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN in 2012. Wormholes remain theoretical constructs not observed in nature. Singularity, the point of infinite density within black holes, is a mathematical concept still not directly observed or better understood due to this event. LIGO and Virgo (another European gravitational wave detector) are leading observatories for such phenomena.

IASCODEX · Answer

Option A: 'Higgs boson particles' were detected.

IASCODEX · Answer

Option C: Possibility of inter-galactic space travel through 'wormhole' was confirmed.

IASCODEX · Answer

Option D: It enabled the scientists to understand 'singularity'.