Speaker
Description
On August 17, 2017, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations measured gravitational waves from the inspiral of two neutron stars in a galaxy 40 Mpc away. This spectacular event GW170817 was subsequently observed across the electromagnetic spectrum. This first multi-messenger binary neutron star observation provided new insights into the nuclear equation of state of matter, the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements, our understanding of gamma-ray bursts and jet physics, the speed of gravity, and cosmology, among many other things. But this event was also just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we hope to learn with future gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations. I will review what we learned from GW170817, and what we hope to learn in the future with the current- and next-generation of gravitational-wave instruments.
