Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

[Higgsy]

Since they're claiming to have ruled out all environmental noise, they should have included that environmental noise in their tests data. They didn't do that. They stripped out all environmental factors that hey could, and *pretended* to have eliminated environmental noise from further consideration.

There you go again. It's not just that you are not agreeing. You are not listening. The sigma relates to the confidence that the signal does not arise from random steady-state noise, and the environmental transient signal are excluded by considering the hundreds of subsidiary channels, by signal coherence at the sites and by matching the signal to templates. What could be easier to understand than that? Your nonsensical demand that environmental transients should be including in assessing the steady state random noise level is, well, nonsensical.

[Higgsy]

Wait. They have experiments with Black Holes now?! Where is this Black Hole they experiment with and how did they create it?

Observation, dear boy.

[Higgsy]

I don't know what specific observation you are referring to here (perhaps the hypothesis that the supermassive BH at the galactic centre rips and ejects stars which the recoalesce into planet sized lumps?), but black holes are known theoretically and experimentally to accelerate matter in their vicinity that does not fall into the event horizon. Obviously, if it does fall in then it's lost forever, but not all matter accelerated by a BH falls in. Google black hole jets for more info.

Yes, well I understand all that.

You obviously don't.

But the definition of a black hole seems to vary according to need here. Either it is an all-attracting object, or it is (most likely) a figment of someone's imagination.

Not at all. As I explained, if something crosses the event horizon whether it's matter or radiation it doesn't come back out. But that doesn't prevent the black hole's gravity from accelerating matter on trajectories that do not cross the event horizon. And as I say, that comports with theory and is observed.

The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy is in play here. Nothing is "lost forever"; neither mass nor energy.

It's lost to the rest of the universe, because it can't get back out. And when I say forever, I'm ignoring Hawking radiation which would cause the black hole to evaporate over unimaginably long periods of time.

Whenever an object (a baryonic mass) approaches and is caught up in a Bennett pinch (or a Z pinch) it begins to be drawn into the pinch via a pair of twisted electromagnetic arms. As is plunges into the pinch it begins to be dissected, or more aptly, disassembled. The binding energies are released (which accounts for the radiation from the area) and as it descends into the pinch it is accelerated up to relativistic speed. Each "segment" (or layer) of the pinch contains the same amount of energy, and when it gets down to the tiniest level an enormous amount of energy is applied to the "baryons". They are stripped naked. Nothing but mass. This is what you think is a "black hole".

And your evidence for this is what exactly? Have you done any quantitative analysis to see whether any of this as at all plausible? Or is it just a story you happen to like?

Then they pass through the pinch and begin to reassemble themselves via a charge component that they gather from having passed through the pinch.

The "quarks" (if that's the right word) become atoms; the atoms become molecules, and so on up the chain. Ad infinitum.

Evidence?

[Michael Mozina]

Since they're claiming to have ruled out all environmental noise, they should have included that environmental noise in their tests data. They didn't do that. They stripped out all environmental factors that hey could, and *pretended* to have eliminated environmental noise from further consideration.

There you go again. It's not just that you are not agreeing. You are not listening. The sigma relates to the confidence that the signal does not arise from random steady-state noise,

Not only am I listening, I even agree with you on that point. A seven sigma figure wouldn't make their claim as to cause any "better", nor does it support their claim as to cause. We both seem to agree on these points.

and the environmental transient signal are excluded by considering the hundreds of subsidiary channels,

That just points out their biased process of elimination methodology. If they use external resources to eliminate all *other* claims as to cause, why isn't that same process of elimination methodology applied to celestial claims too, and why isn't there even a category for "unknown cause"? Just the fact that a signal *cannot* be categorized as being "unknown" in origin demonstrates the extreme bias that is present in their methodology.

by signal coherence at the sites

How do we *know* (with any quantified level of confidence) that ordinary blip transients *never* show up in both detectors? How could they even have any knowledge of the range of influences and different patterns that might be made by ordinary blip transients when they were only in the 'engineering run' during the time of this signal?

and by matching the signal to templates.

And yet blip transients fit the same templates.

What could be easier to understand than that?

It's easy enough to "understand". It's a lot harder to "believe", particularly when they employ a highly *biased* methodology that favors any and all celestial claims over all other claims as to cause.

Your nonsensical demand that environmental transients should be including in assessing the steady state random noise level is, well, nonsensical.

Boloney. Without it, they have no evidence to demonstrate that ordinary environmental transients cannot produce that very same signal. All they have is a blatantly biased methodology that doesn't even eliminate ordinary environmental factors as the potential cause of the signal in any quantified manner. Their complete and total lack of even a single EM counterpart to any of the three signals also undermines their claim about these signals being celestial in origin. Not only *didn't* they statistically rule out environmental noise as the potential cause of the signal, observations from space do not even jive with their claim of these signals being celestial in origin.

[Zyxzevn]

What is the frequency of the your so-called amplitude modulation? (measured)

"your so-called" is not in place here.
These signals show a CLEAR amplitude modulation.
The only question is how much it affects the signal.

I added a good theory to explain why we can expect a amplitude modulation.
And I agree that I still have to measure the signals accurately.

To accurately do that I have to make a program for that.
One that counts the distance between the ups and downs, preferably with the
highest resolution data.
I do it when I have some time for it, and I am glad someone wants to know.

But It is their job.
I hope for them that there is some paper that deals with this problem of resonance and echoes,
and what exactly causes the amplitude modulation. And how this affects their signals.
Otherwise they have neglected a very important part of their signal analysis.

[Higgsy]

What is the frequency of the your so-called amplitude modulation? (measured)

"your so-called" is not in place here.
These signals show a CLEAR amplitude modulation.
The only question is how much it affects the signal.

As I have explained amplitude modulation depends on the amplitude of a single tone being modulated. But this signal is more complex than that and cannot be described as amplitude modulation. Therefore it is "so-called" by you and no-one else.

I added a good theory to explain why we can expect a amplitude modulation.

No you didn't - I have explained why your "theory" has no basis in reality.

And I agree that I still have to measure the signals accurately. To accurately do that I have to make a program for that.
One that counts the distance between the ups and downs, preferably with the
highest resolution data.
I do it when I have some time for it, and I am glad someone wants to know.

So you have boldly announced that the data contains a 268Hz tone because you expect it to, but even though you have the data, you haven't actually looked to see whether there is 268Hz tone in there? Wow.

But It is their job.
I hope for them that there is some paper that deals with this problem of resonance and echoes,

There are no tones caused by "echoes" as a result of power and signal recycling because that's not how a Fabry-Perot cavity works with a CW laser. The 268Hz is purely a figment of your imagination.

[Higgsy]

Oh, and by the way, why don't you label the axes on those traces.

[Cargo]

Wait. They have experiments with Black Holes now?! Where is this Black Hole they experiment with and how did they create it?

Observation, dear boy.

There is nothing to observe though. Perhaps you mean inferred through assumption.
Anyway, what experiments were you referring to anyway?

[Michael Mozina]

I think that there are a few points which are stunningly clear about the various LIGO claims.

Not only is their sigma figure not related to cause (as everyone seems to agree), it doesn't even eliminate normal environmental factors as being the actual cause of the signal. It's basically nothing more than bright red mathematical (discovery) lipstick on confirmation bias pig.

The only way that LIGO can claim to eliminate various environmental factors as being responsible for any specific chirp signal is to claim that there is no *external evidence* to support the environmental claim, therefore that option cannot be the cause. For instance, if there is no external evidence for ground movement, they eliminate that option. If they don't see overt evidence of EM field effects, that is also eliminated from further consideration. When they get to their *own* celestial source claims however, they throw that process of elimination methodology right out the window, demonstrating conclusively that their methodology is biased in favor of their own celestial pig.

The different "transients" that show up in the raw LIGO noise are almost too numerous to classify. They come in all different kinds of shapes, sizes, duration patterns, etc. LIGO basically picked one specific pattern that seemed to be mathematically connectable to black hole merger models, and they basically then made a whole host of dubious assumptions about how "blip transients" cannot produce these same "chirp" signals. That's like randomly picking *one* type of option from hundreds of options, and claiming that "blip transients" cannot produce this *one* option, while still in the *engineering* run no less. It's just an absurd claim to start with.

I think it's already likely that "chirps" show up in just one detector at a time, *all the time*, demonstrating that the environment is the actual "cause" of such "chirp" signals *most* of the time. without any question. The only "unusual' instance is when these chirps show up in *both* detectors at roughly the speed of light from some specific source. In that more rare of instances, it's still most likely to be related to an EM field effect that is located somewhere between both detectors, and within range of both detectors. it's still almost *certainly* an environmental source those chirps too, since those chirps must be showing up in just one detector at a time anyway. I'll have to look over at gravity spy for a few examples, but I can't believe that "chirp signals" are unusual or rare, it's just rare that they show up in both detectors at once.

The statistical 'odds' are that these chirps are also due to an environmental cause, but it's difficult to isolate the actual cause unless we can first identify what causes a 'chirp' signal in just one detector.

This "chirp" issue is likely to get uglier for LIGO with three detectors online for two basic reasons. The chirps should show up in all three detectors, one detector at a time. Occasionally the source of the chirp signal may be within range of just two of the detectors at a time, but not the third, and then they'll have a moral dilemma on their hands. They theoretically could even occasionally (I'd guess more rarely) show up in all three detectors at a time if it's a signal from something like a sprite from high in the atmosphere that occurs at just the right location, but even then they are unlikely to have a "visual confirmation" of any sort of celestial event, even with a much more tightly constrained area of the sky.

The lack of exclusion of the environmental factors is directly related to their own bias due to their failure to exclude their own claims as they excluded all other potential environmental causes of the signal, and the fact they cherry picked out the background noise from the statistical data set just to get a high sigma figure, not because it helped them eliminate the possibility of an environmental influence.

The blip transient issue comes into play here by demonstrating that 'chirp" type signals can just show up in one detector at a time, and nobody knows their cause. I think that all that has to be done here to undermine LIGO's claim about eliminating blip transients as the cause is to show examples of 'chirp" signals from "blip transients" show up routinely in just one detector at a time. I think that's something I'll spend some time on.

The "rationalizations' that I've heard to date as to why LIGO can't corroborate their claim *externally* are simply hilarious. Not only did they exclude all other possible claims due to a lack of external confirmation, there isn't even a really logical way to explain why a celestial event that emits the energy equivalent of multiple solar masses in a quarter of a second wouldn't emit detectable EM radiation that would be observed on Earth. I'll I've heard are really lame and goofy excuses where everyone tries to tiptoe around both the bias issue, and the lack of EM radiation issue like they simply don't matter.

Why? Because the 'chirp' signal happens to be the only type of signal that both fits their own model, and which they can stick into a 'classification" for further sigma manipulation.

Make no mistake about it, LIGO's claim is purely "sloppy science'. There's nothing of substance to it. If they had a visual confirmation of a celestial event that can be associated with a specific signal from LIGO, then they actually might be able to build a real scientific case to support their claim, particularly if they could verify more than one event.

As it stands however, they've struck out three straight times now, and we're just supposed to accept their word that nothing else in the whole universe could explain these three signals better than gravitational waves, but they won't even do a real sigma calculation on actual background noise, just cherry picked subsets of time that have already been *stripped* of all the most likely cause of the signal.

LIGO's claims are just examples of pure confirmation bias on a stick, which is why they've struck out three times in a row, even with *billions* of dollars worth of external hardware at their disposal, and thousands of man hours spent trying to find such evidence.

I'm thinking that this nonsense could end up being a bigger fiasco than BICEP2. This could be the final nail in the coffin in terms of the way that the public views astronomy in general, particularly if this whole thing finally falls apart *after* they award the Nobel Prize.

What a huge can of empirical worms.

[Michael Mozina]

It's worth reminding everyone that not only doesn't the sigma calculation demonstrate a particular cause with any confidence, it does *not* even rule out ordinary environmental factors as the real "cause" of the signals in question. That is because LIGO specifically and intentionally filtered out most normal environmental noise *before* doing any calculations on their cherry picked subset of days and times.

The rationale that has been used by LIGO to exclude various environmental factors from further consideration is directly related to *external* data from other auxiliary equipment. Any and every potential environmental factor was eliminated as the potential cause of the signal based upon a *lack* of any external corroboration in external hardware. Only in the single instance where celestial claims are proposed as the 'cause' is this process of elimination method *ignored* and not applied. That's just blatant confirmation bias, pure and simple.

I don't think anyone has yet tried to claim that "chirp" signals are particularly unique or unusual. They seem to show up routinely in *one* detector at a time, demonstrating conclusively that similar chirp type signals have a definite environmental cause, which hasn't yet been identified. The only thing that's unique about these three signals is that they showed up in *both* detectors rather than just one. Other than this one issue, there's nothing particularly unique about the chirp signal. It just happens to match their mathematical models of BH-BH merger patterns. The reason these three signals might have shown up in two detectors at once could *easily* have to do with *location, location, location" of the actual cause of the signal. If it's a discharges related phenomenon, it probably just has to occur somewhere between the two upgraded detectors. It's also worth noting that LIGO was still in an 'engineering run" to "shake out" the issues they were dealing with as a result of hundred million dollar upgrades to their equipment. It's hard to see how they might have much of an inventory of "blip transients" to go by. It seems like they just "devised" a was to create different categories of 'transients' with the express intent of trying to claim that blip transients couldn't be the cause. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that ordinary transient noise *never* produces 'chirp patterns' so their decision to try to put limits on what blip transients could do or might do seem entirely arbitrary, particularly after looking at the various types of data patterns they're seeing.

Admittedly, I was a little nervous about publicly denouncing and openly questioning LIGO's "discovery" claims, but I'm far more at ease now, particularly after LIGO struck out a third straight time and they couldn't link even one of their three signal back to a specific celestial event. I also feel more confident after having a few "skeptics" try to pick on my paper. I"m pleased with the outcome of those conversations thus far in terms of the points that I made, and in terms of the maintream's inability to explain those problems in the LIGO methodology.

[Michael Mozina]

It seems like the conversations here and at CF are winding down, so I'd like to make a few final comments.

Though I remain open minded to a QM definition of gravity that ties all the forces together, I personally embrace GR theory for now. I also embrace the possibility of gravitational waves. I embrace the basic technology that LIGO is using to detect them too. I'm open minded to the possibility of actually "discovering" gravitational waves in the future, and I hope that scientists manage to do so within my lifetime. I wouldn't even mind eating a little crow if LIGO does eventually start linking specific LIGO signals to specific celestial events either. Long before the last round of upgrades, I even devoted some computer time to their efforts using their screensaver app. I like the LIGO concept and I support the concept.

As it relates to LIGO's current claims however, I remain an "atheist' in the sense that I simply lack belief in the validity of their methodology, not necessarily their technology. These are completely separate issues IMO,and I see it that way.

I continue to support the LIGO technology, and I look forward to having additional LIGO stations online. That would indeed offer us a way to test LIGO's assumptions about blip transients, and to allow LIGO to better triangulate a candidate signal to a much smaller and more constrained portion of the sky.

I even hope that we eventually discover gravitational waves using LIGO technology during my lifetime, but alas I don't believe that has occurred yet. Their current methodology is simply biased in favor of celestial claims, and it is blatantly biased against all other potential causes of the signal.

You have to ask yourself how likely it is that their *single*, billion light year away explanation for these types of signals is really the most likely probable cause of these three specific signals, particularly if similar "chirp" transients show up regularly in both (and potentially all) the LIGO detectors and therefor originate locally. IMO it's far more likely that these are rare EM related phenomenon which occur somewhere between both detectors. LIGO did just recently increase the sensitivity of their equipment by a factor of 10 in terms of distance, and by a factor of 1000 in terms of volume space. They probably now enjoy some overlap in terms of being able to detect the same EM transient event.

I think a third operational LIGO station would at least confirm the possibility that similar future "chirps" might sometimes show up in just two of the three detectors, but not all three. That would tend to support my position, and undermine the claim of "discovery'. Such chirps and very rare EM events may even occasionally affect all three detectors at once, but again, without evidence of any celestial event as the actual 'cause', all we have is a pig in a poke, and a bunch of wild speculation.

According to that article in Nature magazine, LIGO already has a half dozen or so more candidate signals to choose from for their next published paper, so it should be *extremely* interesting to see if any of those half dozen or so candidate signals enjoy any type of external support. So far every single 'claim' by LIGO can only be confirmed by LIGO, and there is no falsification mechanism that exists or that is offered in their methodology. The don't even offer a category for "unknown cause" in their flawed (current) methodology.

This type of blatantly biased methodology is simply *beneath* the Herculean efforts that have been made to design, engineer and build the LIGO detectors IMO. I hope that LIGO is eventually successful in discovering gravitational waves, but I simply lack belief in their current methodology. It appears to suffer from a seriously bad case of confirmation bias.

Nothing I've heard during these online conversations/debates would tend to suggest that there's even a reasonable or logical excuse for that blatant bias. It only makes their lack of any type of external corroboration look that much more suspicious every single time they keep failing to corroborate their claims of a celestial origin of these 'chirps'. Unfortunately I think this problem is likely to get much worse before it gets better, and the whole thing is likely to unravel as more stations come online.

[Zyxzevn]

https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04191On the time lags of the LIGO signals

To date, the LIGO collaboration has detected three gravitational wave (GW) events appearing in both its Hanford and Livingston detectors. In this article we reexamine the LIGO data with regard to correlations between the two detectors. With special focus on GW150914, we report correlations in the detector noise which, at the time of the event, happen to be maximized for the same time lag as that found for the event itself. Specifically, we analyze correlations in the calibration lines in the vicinity of 35\,Hz as well as the residual noise in the data after subtraction of the best-fit theoretical templates. The residual noise for the two more recent events, GW151226 and GW170104, exhibits equivalent behavior with respect to each of their time lags. A clear distinction between signal and noise therefore remains to be established in order to determine the contribution of gravitational waves to the detected signals.

TLDR The noise is correlated, so we can not be sure if there is a real signal.

[Webbman]

no one finds it a little odd that, like neutrinos, your "detecting" these insanely random and rare goings on for things you are apparently immersed in.

immersed in something alright.

[Zyxzevn]

There is a respond from a junior scientist related to LIGO.

To argue against the signal correlation problem (paper above), he shows that this correlation is caused
by the Fourier transform. He states that the data needs to be "whitened" first.

Yet, this "whitening" procedure is not a part of the LIGO signal analysis.
It did not appear in their procedure on their shared data.
And following his logic, the fourier-transform used in the LIGO signal analysis can create
a correlation between two independent data streams.

There is also the other question of the standing wave with varying amplitude in the raw data,
which according to me gives problems with the fourier transforms and can cause false positives.
And the fact that the (filtered) signal does not match the actual model (See above) and the
(filtered) signals are different between both "detectors".

According to Michael there is also the veto and cherry-picking of data.

[Higgsy]

There is a respond from a junior scientist related to LIGO.

To argue against the signal correlation problem (paper above), he shows that this correlation is caused
by the Fourier transform. He states that the data needs to be "whitened" first.

Yet, this "whitening" procedure is not a part of the LIGO signal analysis.

What makes you think that LIGO doesn't whiten the data before searching for signals? Of course they do: you need to follow the procedures on their tutorial page here: https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914 ... orial.html

It did not appear in their procedure on their shared data.

Yes it did. See above.

And following his logic, the fourier-transform used in the LIGO signal analysis can create
a correlation between two independent data streams.

No it can't - you clearly don't understand either the original signal processing, nor the claims in the recent paper, nor the explanations given by the LIGO researcher which you link to. He merely demonstrates that taking a Fourier transform of the coloured data without whitening and without ensuring that the data is apodised can lead to correlations.

There is also the other question of the standing wave with varying amplitude in the raw data,
which according to me gives problems with the fourier transforms and can cause false positives.

No, you're wrong, and I have explained to you multiple times that you don't understand the signal and power recycling methods, because you are ignorant of interferometry. The recycling does not and cannot introduce signals at the frequency you claim (or any other frequency within the signal band).

And the fact that the (filtered) signal does not match the actual model (See above) and the
(filtered) signals are different between both "detectors".

Nope, this is also wrong - the signals are an excellent match to the template and when the template is subtracted from the signal what is left is very low amplitude Gaussian noise. See the article you link to.

It seems likely that the critique has flaws which means that there is, in fact, no challenge to the discovery. However, it seems that LIGO and the authors of the critique will work together to reach a consensus on the status of the critique.

According to Michael there is also the veto and cherry-picking of data.

Well yes, that's just utter nonsense based on his complete lack of understanding of how data analysisis is conducted in physics. The paper quoted at least has some case to answer. Michael's complaints about the (invalid) veto and "cherry picking" are worthless and would be immediately seen to be so by any competent physicist.