The recent gravitational wave observations of the collision of black holes and neutron stars by the advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors have allowed us to pierce into the strong gravity regime, where the gravitational interaction is simultaneously unfathomably large and wildly dynamical.

These gravitational waves encode a trove of information about physics that is prime for the taking, including potential revelations about the validity of Einstein’s theory and constraints of possible deviations in extreme astrophysical environments. In this talk, I will describe some of the physics inferences we have made about gravity and what lies beyond from gravitational wave observations, and the future inferences that will come next.