No - neutron stars can merge to form a black hole or a larger neutron star, but it was thought that this mass-gap is beyond a threshold that was too small to fo

No - neutron stars can merge to form a black hole or a larger neutron star, but it was thought that this mass-gap is beyond a threshold that was too small to form a black hole, but too large to still be a neutron star. The fuss is that this mass-gap has been something that was theorized but also backed up by a (lack of) astronomical observations. This result means that it is possible to have _something_ in this range, and the fact that it was detected so "early" in gravitational wave observations suggests that they are more common than we otherwise would have thought, again from theory and previous observations. Hence, there's something we don't understand about these objects.