Is GW190521 a gravitational wave echo of wormhole remnant from another universe?

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Authors: 七朗 片瀬, Qing-Yu Lan, Hao-Yang Liu, Yu-Tong Wang, Yun-Song Piao
Cited by: 2
References: 72

Abstract

Abstract A particularly compelling aspect of the GW190521 event detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration is that it has an extremely short duration, and lacks a clearly identifiable inspiral phase usually observed in the binary black holes (BBHs) coalescence. In this work, we hypothesize that GW190521 might represent a single, isolated gravitational wave (GW) echo pulse from the wormhole, which is the postmerger remnant of BBHs in another universe and connected to our universe through a throat. The ringdown signal after BBHs merged in another universe can pass through the throat of wormhole and be detected in our universe as a short-duration echo pulse. Our analysis results indicate that our model yields a network signal-to-noise ratio comparable to that of the standard BBHs merger model reported by the LVK collaboration. For GW190521, Bayesian model selection yields ln ℬ Echo BBH ≃ -2.9, indicating that the data favor the BBH hypothesis over our echo-for-wormhole model.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Publication details

Journal / source
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Volume
2026
Issue
03
Pages
008–008
Publication date
1 March 2026
Language
EN