桔子视频

Pavan Vynatheya, University of Toronto

Reed Essick, University of Toronto

Lieke Van Son, Harvard University

Daniel Green, University of California San Diego

One century following Einstein's prediction of spacetime disturbances and gravitational waves, the laser-enabled special detectors LIGO achieved the most accurate measurement ever made by humans across science and engineering and revealed to us the gravitational-wave signals produced by the most powerful collisions of black holes in the universe. These revolutionary discoveries have given birth to a brand new field of astronomy, a completely new way of sensing the cosmos and exploring its darkest corners. I will review the first direct detections of gravitational waves and what they can teach us about the nature of black holes and other exotic cosmic events.

Black hole-neutron star and neutron star-neutron star mergers are powerful emitters of gravitational waves, and can produce a wide range of bright electromagnetic transients. They also provide us with a remarkable environment to study nuclear interactions in the cold, dense core of neutron stars, and may significantly contribute to the production of many heavy elements whose origin remains unexplained.