> Whereas the original discovery spotted waves originating from the collision and merger of two star-sized black holes, the most likely source of the latest finding is the combined signal from many pairs of much larger black holes — millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun — slowly orbiting each other in the hearts of distant galaxies. These waves are thousands of times stronger and longer than those found in 2015, with wavelengths of up to tens of light years. By contrast, the ripples detected since 2015 using a technique called interferometry are just tens or hundreds of kilometres long.
Seems like they probably know where these are coming from. I imagine, like your boat analogy, that we can observe massive natural oceans swells and wouldn't notice the wake of a boat as it moves across the ocean.
from a layman's perspective, this sounds crazy cool that they were able to "see" this in the data. seems like one of those things that would be easy to miss from being scoped in and only discoverable after zooming back out. waaaaay out.
Seems like they probably know where these are coming from. I imagine, like your boat analogy, that we can observe massive natural oceans swells and wouldn't notice the wake of a boat as it moves across the ocean.