Speaker
Description
The ability to directly detect gravitational waves from merging binary
black holes gave us our first-ever access to the genuinely strong-field
dynamics of gravity. In 2017 a binary neutron star coalescence was also
observed, accompanied by a short gamma ray burst, thus corroborating the
link between the two. The discovery of an afterglow gave a glimpse of
the putative formation mechanism for a large fraction of heavy elements
in the Universe. In addition, gravitational wave observations provided
us with a way to directly probe the behavior of bulk nuclear matter,
about which much is still unknown. Finally, gravitational wave
observations of both binary black hole and binary neutron star
coalescences yield a new type of distance marker which bypasses the
"cosmic distance ladder". After this I will discuss what other
discoveries can be expected in the near term, and what will be the new
opportunities arising from future new detectors on the ground and in
space.
