The Gravitational Wave Landscape: A Decade of Discovery and a Look Ahead
The first decade of gravitational wave astronomy has brought a remarkable series of discoveries. The first detection of a binary black hole merger in 2015 was followed just two years later by observations of a binary neutron star merger in both gravitational waves and light. In 2023, pulsar timing arrays announced evidence for a gravitational wave background at nanohertz frequencies. Ongoing improvements to ground-based detectors and the planned launch of the space-based LISA observatory in the 2030s promise a wealth of new science. They also present new challenges: extracting information from increasingly rich data containing many overlapping signals. I will review some highlights of the first decade and explore the discoveries we hope to make in the decades ahead, along with their implications for our understanding of gravity, cosmology, and astrophysics.