Institute for Advanced Study / Princeton University Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Abstract: The first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, created by the merger of black holes more than a billion years ago, was followed by many other signals from black holes. In 2017, the merger of neutron stars was detected by LIGO and Virgo detectors and by gamma-ray telescopes, and was found by many electromagnetic observations too: a new era of gravitational wave astrophysics was started with very bright prospects for the future. The number of observations has been accelerating, and is now into the hundreds! I will describe the technology involved in the current gravitational wave detectors, details of the latest discoveries and the exciting prospects for more detections in the next years, including plans for new detectors in Europe and the USA.