Princeton University Gravity Initiative Seminar

Abstract: On September 14th 2015, the LIGO detectors opened a new window onto the universe with the first direct detection of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger. This first event alone had profound implications for tests of general relativity and our understanding of the formation and evolution of compact-object binaries. Ten years later, the catalog of gravitational-wave sources has grown to over 300 candidate events, including all possible combinations of merging black holes and neutron stars. We have learned that gravitational waves travel at speeds consistent with that of light, that binary neutron star mergers are an astrophysical site of heavy-element nucleosynthesis, and that black holes many tens of times the mass of the sun can form from stellar collapse. In this talk, I will review these findings and the other key astrophysical and cosmological insights we have gleaned from a decade of gravitational-wave discovery. I will conclude by highlighting what we can look forward to as we enter the second decade of gravitational-wave astronomy.