Current Status of Gravitational Wave Research

Gravitational waves predicted by the general relativity almost 100 years ago have been implicated indirectly only by astrophysical observations such as the orbital evolution of binary pulsars. The advanced detectors of gravitational waves will become operational in a few years and they are expected to make direct detection of gravitational wave signal coming from merging of binaries composed of neutron stars or stellar mass black holes from external galaxies. Korean Gravitational Wave Group (KGWG) is contributing to the possible detection through the data analysis of LIGO and Virgo. We summarize the perspectives of the gravitational wave research and the impacts of the detection in the near future in astronomy and astrophysics.