The Advanced LIGO detector, currently being installed at the LIGO Observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, using the existing infrastructure, is expected to transform gravitational wave science into a real observational tool. The change of more than a factor of 10 in sensitivity comes also with a significant increase in the sensitive frequency range. This will allow Advanced LIGO to look at the last minutes of life of pairs of black holes as they spiral closer, coalesce into one larger black hole, and then vibrate becoming one. It will also allow the instrument to look for periodic signals from the many rotating neutron stars in our galaxy. Advanced LIGO will also search for the gravitational wave cosmic background, proving constraints on theories about the development of the early universe.