A collision observed between two black holes, each more massive than a hundred suns, is the largest merger of its kind ever recorded, according to new research.

An international team of physicists discovered the largest-ever merger of 2 black holes through a phenomenon known as gravitational waves.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) is no stranger to making history and breaking records. In 2015, its twin detectors based in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, made the first ever detection of gravitational waves.

Supermassive black holes spiral towards each other in this simulation created by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that shows how they glow in ultraviolet and X-ray light. The black holes are only 40 orbits from merging.

But in the past two decades, new types of black holes have been seen and astronomers are beginning to understand how they form. Called supermassive black holes, they have been found at the center of pretty much every galaxy and are a hundred thousand to billion times the mass of our Sun.