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Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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Flann 5
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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geo wrote:Based on my reading of the subject, it looks like gravity waves have been discovered or, at least, that's the current interpretation by experts in the field. Unless you have a degree in astrophysics, you kind of have to rely on the expert opinions of astrophysicists. That's not an argument ad populum or appeal to authority, it's intellectual humility.
Hi Geo. I'm no expert either. I did notice a predominance of skepticism among the commentators beneath the article in Nature.

They're probably not experts either though many are quite knowledgeable There does seem to be a lot of debate among top theoretical physicists about a lot of these theories. Neil Turok vs Stephen Hawking is cited by one commentator.

So it's probably not as clear cut as it might seem.It seems to be taken as triumphant evidence for gravity waves and maybe it is.
I would think the repeatable element should be important too. Are they rushing to award this a Nobel prize?

Certainly Einstein made some amazing discoveries and was a really brilliant thinker and theorist. His theory of relativity is not in doubt as far as I can tell.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Fri May 27, 2016 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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geo

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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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I always appreciate your civility, Flann. Skepticism is an appropriate response. It could take years or even decades to make sense of this discovery. So though it does seem to verify some of Einstein's predictions, there's still a lot of work to do. Also, it bears repeating that science news reporting is frequently awful. Read Steve Novella's latest blog.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... s-reports/

As Novella points out, even scientists and the universities they work for are prone to exaggeration and sensationalism. Science is always a long term endeavor. In ten years or so we will certainly have a clearer picture of this discovery. Still, it's exciting news and would be even if it didn't jive completely with Einstein's predictions.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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Flann wrote:
Are they rushing to award this a Nobel prize?
They are more interested at this point in keeping the current paradigm alive and well.

Just for starters regarding how much this announcement of discovery and confirmation, there's nothing planned to independently replicate and confirm what these "1000 scientists" have declared.

General thoughts:

Other interferometers were not running and therefore not able to DETECT and CONFIRM the twin interferometers data set. What if the data they generated had been different? How would that have been interpreted?

This was the first "confirmatory" observation and detection of gravity waves to date because the technology had not been sensitive enough till now. Therefore, there has been no replication as of yet. How could there have been. That is key to the scientific method. This seems irresponsible of the scientific community - again. Its happened before.

It's interesting that the twin interferometers were scheduled for a software upgrade just before the detection. Maybe nothing to that at all. Likely not. But it just stuck out to me.

The gravitational waves were detected by us from a source 1.8 billion years in the past.
What was the method of noise filtering used? From the article, it seems they relied on sporadic false positives fed into the interferometers to test their ability to detect true from false signals.
Really? How might scientists been able to accurately mimic false positives of "chirping" from two black holes over a billion miles away and in the past?

I am skeptical.

Rather than openly admitting skepticism, a couple of BT members chose to either divert the question altogether, or just ask me to what I thought, not out of genuineness. The person was being haughty.

There is no true humility here. Pleae stop pretending.
And stop playing innocent, people (you know who you are). The rhetorical pattern has always been to never commit to anything, but instead attack someone's worldview, while characterizing them as anti science, believers in magic, deniers, or drooling idiots that dont know science.

Most of you should hope youre never put on the witness stand to represent and defend science.
I'd shred you to pieces during cross examination.

It was an honest question from the start.
You resorted to your usual rhetoric.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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ant wrote:Just for starters regarding how much this announcement of discovery and confirmation, there's nothing planned to independently replicate and confirm what these "1000 scientists" have declared.
Wrong.
Rochester Institute of Technology researchers continue exploring gravitational waves in a series of upcoming papers. Their reports follow the first direct detection of these waves, predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

...The scope of gravitational wave astronomy will widen as the international network of detectors becomes fully operational. Scientific runs at increasing levels of sensitivity are planned for the U.S.-based LIGO detectors and the Italian counterpart, Advanced Virgo, Whelan noted.

..."LIGO has just provided the first glimpse into the gravitational wave sky, but not the last," said Manuela Campanelli, director of the RIT center and an American Physical Society Fellow.

2/22/16
http://phys.org/news/2016-02-discovery- ... ional.html
The following project had a major setback when NASA backed out, but now China is stepping in and this may become operational in 2034.
“Space-borne (gravity wave) detection is like putting the detector in an excellent vacuum. As it is free of earthly noises, the measurement accuracy can be improved by at least four orders of magnitude,” said HU Wenrui, founding director of the National Microgravity Laboratory at the CAS Institute of Mechanics, who has been a firm advocate for space-based gravitational wave detection in China.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... mc&cad=rja
:btw: Your computer can help in the search for gravity waves. PM me if you need help.
https://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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Your article linked and quoted even states LIGO is the first.

You can read, right?
This is a first by LIGO not a confirmation of a previous detection like LIGOS.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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ant wrote:So you'renot certain theyve been discovered or detected. Is that your answer here or are you going to continue to red herring us all to hell?
How many times does the same thing need to be repeated? No, there is no certainty here. About this and about everything else, til the end of time. That's my answer. Find the email of the scientists involved and ask them if they're certain. Prepare to have your crusade disappointed.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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geo wrote:Skepticism is an appropriate response.
By "skeptical" I meant the significance of the discovery in a historical sense. Some scientific discoveries are hyped up and don't end up being that significant after all. Although I'll have to say, this seems a fairly historic discovery to be sure.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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Interbane wrote:
ant wrote:So you'renot certain theyve been discovered or detected. Is that your answer here or are you going to continue to red herring us all to hell?
How many times does the same thing need to be repeated? No, there is no certainty here. About this and about everything else, til the end of time. That's my answer. Find the email of the scientists involved and ask them if they're certain. Prepare to have your crusade disappointed.

So youre uncertain about this scientific discovery and, say.,certain of purposelessness.

Okay. Thanks. I can accept that from you.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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geo wrote:
geo wrote:Skepticism is an appropriate response.
By "skeptical" I meant the significance of the discovery in a historical sense. Some scientific discoveries are hyped up and don't end up being that significant after all. Although I'll have to say, this seems a fairly historic discovery to be sure.

A historic discovery ya'll are uncertain about.

Okay, I can respect that from you.
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Re: Have Gravity Waves really been discovered yet?

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ant wrote:Your article linked and quoted even states LIGO is the first. You can read, right? This is a first by LIGO not a confirmation of a previous detection like LIGOS.
Your reading skills are poor, maybe you need to slow down. You stated "there's nothing planned to independently replicate and confirm what these '1000 scientists' have declared." In refuting that point, I linked to several instances of ongoing/continuing research with more sensitive instruments to replicate and confirm and perhaps expand the original findings. You merely re-state the original finding.

In addition to my previous post, here are several more gravity wave research projects in the works and an explanation for why they are needed.
Researchers are now planning and building a next generation of even bigger and more isolated detectors deep beneath the ground where hundreds of meters of overlying rock shield against most anthropogenic noises and seismic stresses. In the Kamioka mine in Japan, the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) is already taking shape as workers construct twin sets of three-kilometer arms in newly bored tunnels. Slated to enter operation in 2018, KAGRA will use cryogenically cooled mirrors of sapphire to deliver LIGO-like sensitivity.

After KAGRA, a consortium of European partners is forming tentative plans for an even more ambitious subterranean laser interferometer, the Einstein Telescope, which could come online in the late 2020s at a cost of $1 billion or $2 billion.

...“People wonder why we are not content with one gravitational-wave detector, why we wish to build bigger ones,” says Harald Lück, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany who is a member of the GEO600 and Einstein Telescope teams. “Like electromagnetic radiation, gravitational waves cover an incredibly large range of wavelengths, and you can’t catch all of them with any single facility.”

2/12/16
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... astronomy/
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