Gravitational Wave Astronomy: Delivering on the Promises

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.