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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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A new observational era in gravitational wave astronomy is poised to begin in this decade, with the upcoming start of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. These instruments will be capable of the direct detection of gravitational wave transients, which will yield new insights into the engines powering some of the most energetic astrophysical events: the coalescence of neutron star and/or black hole binary systems, core-collapse supernovae, and isolated neutron star instabilities. I will present the path towards this detection using the second generation of gravitational wave interferometers, and summarize the open analysis challenges, prospects for astrophysical inference and the potential for multi-messenger astronomy with combined information from the electromagnetic and neutrino sectors.
