Gravity Waves

[Zyxzevn]

What about the second LIGO signal (June 2016: GW151226), supposedly smaller (black holes..) than the first. Was there a veto signal around that too, or it was a clean result?

There is so much noise in the signal, that they could also have found the voice of Einstein in it.

[Zyxzevn]

The signal itself still contains a clear phase-change, which is left unexplained.

If there is a real signal, my interpretation of the signal is that the phase light somehow shifted
due to an electromagnetic side-effect. Electric currents can easily cause chirp-like patterns.

I think the phase change points to the detection having come from a more nearby electrical event that was moving. Such as high energy lightning in the upper atmosphere.

Their argument goes something to the effect: We calculated the odds,and the odds are it's a real signal from something. We now claim (without any sigma figure associated with cause) that we've eliminated every other option in the universe, therefore (fill in the blank did it). Give me a break!

What I noticed in discussions with LIGO scientists, is that they were almost all PhD students
that were really proud that they had found a signal.
They all expected there to be a chirp signal, and did not think about it twice.
I have not seen any alternative explanation for chirp signals, while I already posted many in this thread.
Any electric component is already capable of creating chirp signals, but they all think that it is
so unique, that it must be a black hole merger.
The LIGO scientists also mentioned that they get a signal every 5 minutes or so. How many chirps are in there?
How many false positives can we expect from just chance? Once every few years?

Looking at the Chirp signal itself, it is clear that the received signal at one place, is out of phase with
the other place.
I would expect an analysis on that... None.
The nearest what I found was a story about multiverses disturbing the LIGO signal.
That is really pseudo-science of the fifth level. (if it was possible to classify it).

My interpretation is that there might have been an atmospheric electrical disturbance that
through magnetism or electric field caused a very small change in the phase of the LIGO's lasers.
This might be similar to the Aharonov–Bohm effect, which works on charged particles.
And its variant, the Aharonov–Casher effect, on magnetic particles.
While I don't know if it can affect light in a (near) vacuum, it is certainly a point to study.
We might never found it before on light, because we never had a system so accurate as the LIGO.
One problem of this effect, is that shielding does not work with it.

But back to the black holes and LIGO:
First: There exists no direct proof of any black hole. All evidence can be explained in a different way.
Second: There is no direct proof that light is bent by gravity. All evidence can be explained in different ways.
Whether you like GR or not, the proof is still lacking.
Third: The LIGO assumes that this chirp signal is a unique signature. It is really not.

Let me take another famous story:
We find a structure that looks like an old human structure, at a place where we would not expect it.
Due to the low resolution and applying all kinds of filters, it looks very real.
Just a few details are off.
But after a lot of money and effort we get a new picture with more detail, and see that there is nothing there.
This was the face of Mars.

But it is very similar to the LIGO black hole merger. We find something where we don't expect it,
except for a certain group of people that are too deep into all kinds of weird theories.
We apply all kinds of filters on a very low resolution.
And suddenly it looks very real.

But unlike the face, we can not make a new picture with better detail.
So the LIGO is worse for science than the face of Mars.

[Michael Mozina]

Keep in mind that the "black hole merger" claim is a really nothing more than postdicted math exercise designed to get a fit to the signal in question. BICEP2 did exactly the same thing with their paper. They found an observation of polarized photons from space, and they simply postdicted a mathematical fit to that observation. The fact they can manipulate so many of the variables gives them a great deal of mathematical freedom to fit almost *any* signal! There's nothing special or particularly convincing about postdicted math.

We still have absolutely no idea what that actually caused that "chirp". The most "likely" cause is an electromagnetic discharge from an event near the Earth. The *least* likely cause is the one that the LIGO team put on the table. It's not like they even had any type of visual confirmation of their claim, it's just a posticted mathematical fit, just like the postdicted fit in the BICEP2 fiasco paper. The fact they can create a postdicted 'fit' to the signal is directly related to the all various degrees of freedom they have and the variables they tinkered with.

The most disturbing element of the paper IMO is the unethical misrepresentation of the data quality veto, and any explanation of the auxiliary channel data that was associated with that original data quality veto was left out of the paper. Had they provided the appropriate auxiliary channel information that caused the veto initially, that information might offer us an actual clue as to what the real cause might be. Since they hid that data from us, there's no logical way to even "guess" what might have been the real cause of the signal.

The other really *disturbing* aspect of their claim is that "blip transients" *routinely* make the same basic wave form pattern they observed in that signal in the same frequency range, and they routinely show up in both detectors. Their entire basis for 'writing off" blip transients as the cause of that chirp is based upon the claim that "blip transients" have not shown up in both detectors at the same time. They've never had this kind of sensitivity before however, so even that claim is a mere "assumption". The signal(s) in question could easily be considered "evidence" that blip transients *can* be observed in both detectors due to the sensitivity improvements of the last upgrade.

Whatever the real "cause' of 'blip transients', it's almost certain that it's also the real cause of the signal they observed. They don't have any idea what causes blip transients, nor do they have any obvious effect on the auxiliary veto channels, so they can't even logically veto those types of events.

The other key fail in this paper is that their sigma calculation, and the method they used to come up with that number has *absolutely nothing* to do with the likelihood of this signal being related to a black hole merger, nor does it calculate the odds that it's not related to environmental factors. All that timeshifting technique does is weed out "random noise" as being the cause of the signal. There's literally nothing about that sigma number that relates the odds of it being related to a gravitational wave "discovery". Their whole argument is one gigantic handwave, and it's not even an accurate portrayal of events.

I guess the only remaining question is whether or not the Nobel Prize committee will reward the use of "alternative facts", and factual misrepresentations in published papers, or whether they will reject this claim based on ethical grounds. The lack of an honest account of events should be punished, not rewarded.

[Zyxzevn]

While forgetting everything we learned about physics and quasars,
the scientists came up with something new:

Gravitational Wave Kicks Monster Black Hole Out of Galactic Core

The astronomers made up the theory that a quasar can surf on a gravitational wave.

[D_Archer]

While forgetting everything we learned about physics and quasars,
the scientists came up with something new:

Gravitational Wave Kicks Monster Black Hole Out of Galactic Core

The astronomers made up the theory that a quasar can surf on a gravitational wave.

This proves Halton Arp.

But no word on redshift... in the article they do propose that the quasar might be in another Galaxy, that is what the redshift is probably telling them, but now they do propose it is ejected by the foreground galaxy and thus at the "same" distance. Their theories jump the shark big time, the Arp model for quasar ejection (dense plasma) as baby galaxies that grow up to become normal galaxies is much better.

Regards,
Daniel