Gravitational Wave Astronomy: Delivering on the Promises

TL;DR

The paper discusses the progress and future prospects of gravitational wave astronomy, highlighting recent detections and the potential of upcoming detectors to explore new cosmic phenomena.

Contribution

It reviews recent achievements in gravitational wave detection and outlines future developments and their expected scientific impact.

Findings

Binary black holes and neutron stars have been observed.

Gravitational wave astronomy is beginning to fulfill its scientific promise.

Upcoming detectors will expand our understanding of the universe.

Abstract

Now that LIGO and Virgo have begun to detect gravitational wave events with regularity, the field of gravitational wave astronomy is beginning to realise its promise. Binary black holes and, very recently, binary neutron stars have been observed, and we are already learning much from them. The future, with improved sensitivity, more detectors, and detectors like LISA in different frequency bands, has even more promise to open a completely hidden side of the Universe to our exploration.