Nuclear Astrophysics in the new era of multi-messenger Astronomy

One of the overarching questions animating nuclear physics today is "How does subatomic matter organize itself". Neutron stars are cosmic laboratories uniquely poised to answer this fundamental question. The historical first detection of a binary neutron star merger by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration is providing fundamental new insights into the astrophysical site for the r-process and on the nature of neutron-rich matter. Constraints on the tidal polarizability inferred from the gravitational wave signal translate into limits on the neutron-star radius and, perhaps surprisingly, also on the neutron-rich skin of atomic nuclei. However, these limits are significantly lower than those extracted from laboratory experiments. If the upcoming experimental campaigns together with LIGO-Virgo third operating run confirm these results, this may provide evidence in favor of a phase transition in the interior of neutron stars.