How GW170817 Opened a New Way to Observe the Universe

In 2017, LIGO detected a strange rising chirp from 130 million light-years away. Seconds later came gamma rays. Hours later, telescopes found a new point of light beside NGC 4993 — and the story kept growing for years.

This documentary follows GW170817 from gravitational waves to a kilonova, freshly produced r-process material, strontium, an off-axis relativistic jet and the first standard-siren measurement with an identified host. One collision became a new way of observing the universe.

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