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Gravitational-wave observations by LIGO and Virgo have revealed a population of merging stellar-mass binary black holes. The recent GWTC-4 data release has taken the number of confidently detected binary black holes to over 150. While the broad connection between the inferred population and the physics that underlies black hole formation remains elusive, the new data is revealing new features in the population. In this talk, I survey several of these interesting and sometimes perplexing features in the population distribution. I will talk about what information about underlying formation channels and stellar astrophysics we can glean from them. I will also touch on the recent claims about evidence for pair instability transitions and put them in the context of what we understand about PISN stellar physics. |
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