Colloquium on An ​Au-some cosmic explosion and its implication for 21st century Astronomy

Abstract:

On 16 October 2017, LIGO Virgo Scientific Collaboration announced their first detection of gravitational waves from a merging neutron star binary.This event GW170817,discovered on 18 August 2017, was localized to  an incredible 28 square degree on the sky and was essentially coincident with short gamma ray burst, GRB 170817A, observed by Fermi & INTEGRAL. The unprecedented localization of our GW event and its associated GRB detection triggered a world-wide electro-magnetic follow up observations, involving around 70 ground and space based observatories.This event marks the beginning of multi-messenger GW Astronomy while giving glimpses of its true potential. These observations are allowing us to probe many different aspects of astrophysics including the association of short hard gamma ray bust with merging
  neutron stars, EOS of neutron stars, testing general relativity, estimating the Hubble  constant using gravitational waves and processes that created heavy elements like Gold and Platinum in the Universe. The talk will focus on some of the impressive implications of GW170817/GRB170817A​ after giving an elementary introduction to gravitational waves and LIGO/VIRGO instruments