Astronomy Colloquium

Aaron Zimmerman, The University of Texas at Austin

Searching for the Unexpected: Gravitational waves and the origins of binary black holes

A decade of gravitational wave observations has revealed an otherwise invisible side of the Universe. To date we have detected bursts of gravitational waves from hundreds of merging binaries containing black holes and neutron stars. Gravitational waves provide avenues to search for new physics and to reveal the unknown formation channels of the binaries that produce them. In this talk I will review the latest results from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaborations, what we've learned from them, and highlight the growing evidence for surprising structure in the population of binary black holes.