  On August 17, 2017 the LIGO-Virgo collaboration detected for the first time
gravitational waves from the binary merger of two neutron stars (GW170817).
Unlike the merger of two black holes, the associated electromagnetic radiation
was also detected by a host of telescopes operating over a wide range of
frequencies---opening a brand new era of multimessenger astronomy. This
historical detection is providing fundamental new insights into the
astrophysical site for the r-process and on the nature of dense matter. In this
contribution we examine the impact of GW170817 on the equation of state of
neutron rich matter, particularly on the density dependence of the symmetry
energy. Limits on the tidal polarizability extracted from GW170817 seem to
suggest that the symmetry energy is soft, thereby excluding models that predict
overly large stellar radii.
