Prof. Stephan Rosswog (Stockholm University)

Neutron star mergers had long been suspected to produce gravitational

wave “chirps”, gamma ray bursts and produce r-process elements.

While overall convincing, all these conjectures were based on indirect

arguments and none was proven directly.

This changed on August 17, 2017: a gravitational wave signal from a

merging neutron star binary was detected, closely followed by a

short gamma-ray burst and  transients accross the electromagnetic

spectrum coming from the radioactive decay of freshly synthesised r-process

elements. In this talk I will give an overview over these recent, very

exciting developments.