Thank you. It can be challenging as a lay person to filter out the clickbait aspects of these articles.

I don't have any formal training in astrophysics, however I have watched all of PBS Spacetime. They (probably) formed by smaller black holes merging

However, these black holes’ masses aren’t the only mystery, as both were spinning between 80 and 90 percent of their top speed limit.

For a planet, angular momentum is distributed between the spin of the planet and its revolution in its orbit, and these are often exchanged by various mechanisms.

Furthermore from the Wikipedia article:

The conservation of angular momentum explains the angular acceleration of an ice skater as they bring their arms and legs close to the vertical axis of rotation. By bringing part of the mass of their body closer to the axis, they decrease their body's moment of inertia. Because angular momentum is the product of moment of inertia and angular velocity, if the angular momentum remains constant (is conserved), then the angular velocity (rotational speed) of the skater must increase.

The same phenomenon results in extremely fast spin of compact stars (like white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes) when they are formed out of much larger and slower rotating stars.

I’ll read “physics has a problem” as in like “here’s a math problem to solve.”

Yeah, popmech and popsci have been trash for a while.

Scientist measured short GW signal that is difficult to interpret. We publish to get more eyes on the problem.

"Given the small number of observable GW cycles, the large uncertainties in our measurements, and the limitations of current signal models, we expect that there is much still to learn about GW231123 and its source. The feasibility of a wide range of other alternatives to black-hole mergers remains to be investigated. Even within the binary-black-hole merger interpretation, we expect to learn more from detailed studies of high-spin binaries, high-eccentricity mergers, hyperbolic encounters, and lensed signals"

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08219

There are things they find that should exist. For example we though exoplanets were out there but didn't find them until a few years ago.

These actually aren't big for black holes. The largest ones are billions of solar masses. This is notable because it's a collision of two black holes, which we can't observe often.

The article has some confusing phrasing.

A blue whale can only eat a certain amount of food at a time.

It's actually mind-blwoing - current estimates suggest there are about 100 black hole mergers happening somewhere in the observable universe every minute, but we only detect a tiny fraction because most are too distant for our current instruments to pick up the gravitational waves.

Ha you fools, this way all the uranus jokes go straight to me inbox