Gravitational waves from star-eating black holes detected on Earth

Spacetime-altering shock waves came from massive neutron stars crashing into black holes millions of years ago

There are moments when life as an astrophysicist is like hanging around at the bus stop. You wait ages for a cataclysmic cosmic event to send shock waves through the fabric of spacetime and then two come along at once.

Years after scientists began their search for quivers in spacetime anticipated by Albert Einstein, gravitational wave detectors in the US and Europe have detected the first signals from two neutron stars crashing into black holes hundreds of millions of light years away.