Australian PhD students have helped lead a groundbreaking observation of the most colossal and violent cataclysm in the universe – the collision of two black holes – which has proved a theory conceived on paper decades ago by one of history’s greatest minds.

The “sound” of the collision arrived as a wiggle of warped space-time detected by a black hole-hunting machine in the US called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) on January 14, 2025.

Teagan Clarke, a PhD student at Monash University, happened to be on deck surveilling the data as the loudest and clearest-ever signal from the merging of two black holes hit Earth.

“There’s a bunch of analysts like me all over the world monitoring these signals so that someone’s always awake, ready to start analysing these even

See Full Page