[ExI] Gravity wave math

[John Clark]

On Sun, May 28, 2017 at 10:55 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>> ​>​
>> …In contrast the September 14 2015 LIGO signal was so strong that in just
>> hours nearly all the scientists involved were convinced they'd found
>> colliding Black Holes, although they didn't say so publicly for about 6
>> months. There has been some criticism. justified I think, that they kept it
>> secret too long. I'll bet they've already found some cool stuff in the
>> second observing run that they won't talk about until they've finished
>> writing the journal paper…John K Clark
>
>
> ​> ​
> I cut them plenty of slack on this.  The thing hadn’t even been on but for
> a very short time.  Had I seen that signal, I would have said noooo way
> Jose, just no way.  It’s too much like buying exactly one lottery ticket,
> not even knowing how to play, never bought one before, just bought it as an
> afterthought, and it wins the big jackpot, and you are the only one to pick
> that number.  You would just say no, this just can’t be.  I have plenty of
> dreams that go like this, but reality never does, no way.  This signal must
> be a mistake.
> Then consider they would be betting it all: their careers would be
> Pons/Fleishmanned down the toilet forever if they were wrong.
>

​
Yeah you're right.
​ ​
I just finished reading a book "Gravity's Kiss" by Harry Collins that gives
a day by day account of the discovery and the time leading up to the
official announcement. They were all terrified of becoming the next Joseph
Weber, he was a respected physicist and back in the 1970s he claimed to
have found gravitational
​ ​
waves but
​ ​
was soon universally recognized as being wrong and Weber became a joke. So
before they
​ ​
even
​ ​
started looking the LIGO
​ ​
people
​ ​
set up a long protocol they would go through that checked and recheck the
statistics nineteen dozen different ways before they went public with
​ ​
a discovery claim.
​ ​
The protocol was
​ ​
designed for a subtle signal deeply buried in the noise that had to be
carefully teased out,
​ ​
but
​ ​
the October 12 2015
​ ​
event was HUGE,
​ ​
it was
​ far
 larger than anybody expected
​ ​
and and there was nothing subtle about it
​;​
everybody knew immediately it was the real deal but the
​ ​
bureaucracy said you had to go through the entire protocol
​ ​
regardless
​ ​
so they did.

And
​ ​
I think there was another factor, they knew they wouldn't be scooped. If
there was a rival team with their own gravitational
​ ​
wave detector somewhere I'll bet they would have run through that protocol
one hell of a lot faster.
​

 John K Clark​
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