So what? Other 'triggers' of similar events have supporting evidence from *empirical testing*! All you have is a curve fitting exercise that can modified to fit a *wide variety* of potential signals. LIGO even cited one "blip transient" that most closely matched a "black hole/neutron star" signal. What they didn't have is any *external verification* for celestial origin claims. Any *other* potential cause of the signal was *eliminated* based on a lack of external support, but they gave their own claim a *FREE PASS* instead!SelfSim:
Overall 'Gripes'
The point came to mind that MM's gripe about how the non-visually emitting cause (BHs inspiralling), whilst providing no observables other than h(t), in fact does have supporting evidence coming from theory.
You don't have "supporting evidence", you have a "mathematical curve fitting exercise that could match all sorts of signals. With all the variables you can "tweak", you might match almost *any* signal.
Ya, but they *cheated* by not applying that same process of elimination to their *own claim*! There's a complete lack of visual and neutrino evidence for gravitational waves, or for even a celestial origin of the signal in question. If they had followed the same process of elimination, they should have eliminated celestial origin clams based upon a lack of evidence from any external resource, and we'd end up with a signal without an identified source. Instead they simply changed the rules with respect to their own claims, cheated, and called it a "discovery" instead.This is surely why LIGO considers eliminating all known local causes (based on lack of evidence for them),
Sure, as long as they applied the *same process of elimination*! If for instance they had a *visual confirmation* of a celestial event, *then* it would make sense to talk about the source of the signal as being related to gravitational waves. Since they have *zero* confirmation either from neutrinos or from visual verification, celestial origin claims should have been *eliminated*.and whatever is left, ie: the theoretical possibility of BH inspiralling GWs, is following a perfectly legitimate scientific process.
It's not theoretical evidence. It's just a curve fitting exercise that can be modified to fit a *large number* of various signals. That's not evidence of *probability*. At best case it is just evidence of a *possibility*. I accept it's *possible* that gravitational waves are a potential cause of such a signal. I don't accept the claim that it's "probable" however without any sort of external corroboration. Lots of potential things might fit that save curve, and in fact I sited a paper that shows the same signal is related to ordinary background noise from the US power grid *in both cases* no less.This is not the same as what MM is complaining about, because there is theoretical evidence, which is of course, completely ignored by EU acolytes (and MM).
The only reason is "confirmation bias". They didn't apply the same standards of "evidence" to their own claim as they applied to every other potential cause of the signal. Every *other* potential cause was *rejected* based upon a lack of external corroboration. Only in the *single case* of celestial origin claims did they *ignore/skip* that same process of elimination. That is pure confirmation bias on a stick!There are so many reasons as to why the lack of a visual event doesn’t impact on the validity of the discovery:
Sure, you could make any type of excuse that you want for your lack of *evidence* of celestial origin of that signal. You can rationalize it a million different ways if you like. Now you need not only two *hypothetical* entities, you need two *special* hypothetical entities. They can't be charged, and they have to both be "naked". It's damn unlikely that an event would release the energy equivalent of three solar masses in gravity waves alone in just 1/4 second and not light up the sky like a Christmas tree. A charged black hole merger might release *more* energy in the EM spectrum than in gravitational waves. You're just making excuses from where I sit.i) An associated electromagnetic (visual) event isn’t compulsory if the BH merger occurs in the absence an accretion disk.
The overall brightness probably would depend on their charge, and the amount of plasma in the accretion disks around each object. So what? Nobody claimed this job would be easy. It's not my fault that you can't produce any evidence that supports a celestial origin of this signal or *any* subsequent claim either. Why is that? Two "lucky" instances where only uncharged naked black holes did it?Also BH mergers don’t produce bright gamma ray bursts, as this would require that one or both objects, would have to be neutron star(s);
True. I even support more LIGO detectors, but I absolutely won't support sloppy science. With three or more detectors you should be able to triangulate the signal to a "point" rather than a "swath". In that case you have *no excuse under the sun* to *not* get some type of confirmation.ii) As MM himself admits, to accurately pinpoint the source requires more than two GW detectors;
They've had more than year to look through every visual and neutrino data set, and they have found exactly *zero* evidence that the signal is celestial in origin. It's not my fault that the job is "difficult" and cheating the system isn't really an acceptable alternative. If they couldn't provide any evidence of it being celestial in origin they should have eliminated their own claim too and categorized the signal as "unknown in origin". They didn't. They cheated.iii) If the visual event is faint then it falls within the range of large observatory telescopes. Observatory telescopes only cover a limited region of the sky and the probability of a visual GW event falling within the field of view of a CCD detector must be very small;
Wouldn't gravitation wave strength diminish with distance too?iv) The gravitational wave strain amplitude falls off as an inverse distance function and visual brightness, as inverse distance squared. Hence for large distances, the visual brightness can fall below detection limits, no(?)
How "safe"? Was it 80 percent safe, 90 percent safe, or 5.1 sigma "safe"? The fact they *misrepresented* the veto at all is a serious problem. They should have acknowledged that the signal in question originally failed the data quality veto test. They should have explained *why* this exact signal was rejected with high confidence and which auxiliary hardware caused the veto so anyone and everyone had the ability to check their *human safety choice*. How can anyone do that now? LIGO won't even answer my questions. How do they know it was "safe". What triggered the veto? What hardware was involved in the veto? Why did it achieve a "high confidence" rejection? Why didn't they *explain all of this* in the paper?Reason for Veto Removal:
Oh, and for the record, LIGO has already disclosed the reasons for the Veto removal, (in spite of MM's denials/misunderstandings of what is clearly stated in the quote below):
From page 10 LIGO Magazine Issue 8 ..
Originally Posted by Urban, Essick
At 11:23:20 UTC, an analyst follow-up determined which auxiliary channels were associated with iDQ’s decision. It became clear that these were uncalibrated versions of h(t) which had not been flagged as “unsafe” and were only added to the set of available low latency channels after the start of ER8. Based on the safety of the channels, the Data Quality Veto label was removed within 2.5 hours and analyses proceeded after re-starting by hand.
The simply *lied* when they claimed in February of 2016 that no vetoes took place within an hour of the event. Why? Why not give a *complete and honest* account of events for the peer reviewers to decide for themselves what is "safe" and what's not safe? Why misrepresent the facts at all? It's pretty damn obvious why. If they had told the truth, and admitted that they signal failed the VETO test they would have had to justify that claim of "safety" to a 5.1 sigma level of confidence, and we all know full well that would be *impossible* given the fact it was *vetoed* with high confidence. They added that h(t) veto for a reason, and they didn't explain anything about it in the published paper. They gave the false impression (and testimony) that *no vetoes* took place so they could avoid any scrutiny about that veto.
I'm pretty sure this is the first astronomy paper I've ever read that contained *false information*. That's simply bizarre and it's unethical.