Recent work paints a conflicting portrait of the distribution of black hole spins in merging binaries measured with gravitational waves. Some analyses find that a significant fraction of merging binaries contain at least one black hole with a spin tilt >90° with respect to the orbital angular momentum vector, which has been interpreted as a signature for dynamical assembly. Other analyses find that the data are consistent with a bimodal population in which some binaries contain black holes with negligible spin while the rest contain black holes with spin vectors preferentially aligned with the orbital angular momentum vector. In this work, we scrutinize models for the distribution of black hole spins to pinpoint possible failure modes in which the model yields a faulty conclusion. We reanalyze data from the second LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog (GWTC-2) using a revised spin model, which allows for a subpopulation of black holes with negligible spins. In agreement with recent results by Roulet et al., we show that the GWTC-2 detections are consistent with two distinct subpopulations. We estimate that 69%–90% (90% credible interval) of merging binaries contain black holes with negligible spin χ ≈ 0. The remaining binaries are part of a second subpopulation in which the spin vectors are preferentially (but not exactly) aligned to the orbital angular momentum. The black holes in this second subpopulation are characterized by spins of χ ∼ 0.5. We suggest that the inferred spin distribution is consistent with the hypothesis that all merging binaries form via the field formation scenario.

Planetary engulfment events involve the chemical assimilation of a planet into a star's external layer. This can cause a change in the chemical pattern of the stellar atmosphere in a way that mirrors the composition of the rocky object engulfed, with the refractory elements being more abundant than the volatiles. Due to these stellar chemical changes, planetary engulfment events can render the process of chemical tagging potentially inaccurate. A line-by-line differential analysis of twin stars in wide binary systems allows us to test the chemical homogeneity of these associations with typical individual stellar Fe I uncertainties of 0.01 dex and eventually unveil chemical anomalies that could be attributed to planetary engulfment events. Out of the 14 systems analysed here, we report the discovery of the most chemically inhomogeneous system to date (HIP34407/HIP34426). The median difference in abundances of refractory elements within the pair is 0.19 dex and the trend between the differential abundances and condensation temperature suggests that the anomaly is likely due to a planetary engulfment event. Within our sample, five other chemically anomalous systems are found.

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in 2019 April and lasting six months, O3b starting in 2019 November and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in 2020 April and lasting two weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main data set, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.