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On August 17, Fermi GBM saw what

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we call a short gamma-ray burst.

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By itself, it wasnít anything

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impressive. Itís like lots of

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events weíve seen before. It was

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when we got the notice from the

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LIGO people. Actually, the email

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said, "wake up." They had seen

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something, too, that made this

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so exciting. There was a very

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clear gravitational wave signal

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in our data. And not just any

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old gravitational wave but that

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of a binary neutron star merger,

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which we had never seen before.

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Neutron stars are made of the

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densest matter you can have in

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the universe before you get to

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a black hole. So these are very

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exciting objects. And these were

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the objects that were predicted

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to produce the short gamma-ray

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bursts that we see with GBM. This

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new way of learning about the

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universe is kind of like gaining

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a new sense. So it's as if we've

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been watching the news for all

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of human history, but the TV has

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been on mute. And now with

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gravitational wave detectors

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we're able to turn on the sound.

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I think what excites me the most

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about this discovery is that

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we canÖ we're putting together

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traditional astronomy and the

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new, brand new field of

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gravitational wave astronomy

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to learn brand new physics

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that we couldn't do in any other

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way.We do consider ourselves

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explorers. This is the very

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frontier of human knowledge.

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We're learning about fundamental

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forces in nature like gravity.

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We're learning about how the

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interiors of neutron stars,

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which are a very mysterious

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place, behave. We're learning

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about brand new astronomical

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phenomena in other galaxies.

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So we're right there at the

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edge, and because of this event,