For all science has learned about black holes in the last decade, researchers had only really estabished two different sizes for these celestial phenomena — stellar, or five to 50 times greater than the size of our sun, and supermassive, or a million times greater than our nearby star. Nothing had been found in-between. New research from a team including current and former Georgia Tech scientists could shed new light on intermediate-size black holes. Using a new method of observation called multiband gravitational wave astronomy that spans a wider range of wave frequencies, the new study picks up where LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) left off in 2016 with the discovery of evidence of gravitational waves. A handful of Georgia Tech scientists and students were part of that international Nobel Prize-winning effort, including study co-authors Deirdre Shoemaker, professor in the School of Physics, and Karan Jani, who received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from Georgia Tech and is now at Vanderbilt University.
