Scientists may have "heard" the first tantalizing hints of long-theorized primordial black holes born during the Big Bang. The potential detection of these tiny black holes that could be the size of a coin or even as small as a fraction of the size of an atom came from the detection of ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves by two Earth-based detectors, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), and Virgo.
The LIGO-Virgo collaboration has been routinely detecting gravitational waves launched through the fabric of space by mergers between black holes and collisions between extreme stellar remnants called neutron stars, since 2012. On Nov. 12, however, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration issued an automated alert for a black hole merger that was anything but routine.
