The Latest Results from the LIGO-Virgo O3 Observing Run

As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the first detection of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, the LIGO and Virgo detectors have collected an impressive census of compact binary mergers in the local universe. By the end of the second observing run in August 2017 the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration claimed a total of 10 binary black hole mergers and one binary neutron star merger. The third observing run (O3) spanned April 2019 through March 2020, during which the collaborations alerted the astronomical community of 56 merger candidates.  The recently released second catalog of compact binary mergers, GWTC-2, establishes the significance of 39 gravitational wave candidates from the first half of O3, which included the exceptional events GW190425, GW190412, GW190814, and GW190521. I will present some of what ground-based gravitational wave astronomy has taught us about compact binaries over the last five years, and what may lie ahead.