Cosmic Lens Could Rewrite a Massive Black-Hole Merger

A Space.com report notes researchers modeling the GW231123 gravitational-wave event suggest the unusually high inferred masses of the merging black holes could be an illusion caused by gravitational lensing. If a foreground object (roughly 190–850 solar masses) or a globular cluster lenses the signal, the true masses could be around 140 and 100 solar masses, avoiding the need for extreme spins. The lens’s exact nature remains unknown, and confirming lensing in future events will require more sensitive detectors; the team published their findings in Astrophysical Journal Letters.