Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

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Michael Mozina
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Mon Jun 26, 2017 8:03 am

kell1990 wrote:I've followed this thread since its inception, and one of the things that has become abundantly clear is that the--dare I say it--the "standard model"-- is what the researchers now think is the truth of this matter. It is their way or the highway. Just read some of the overbearing rhetoric from some of them and you'll quickly see that this is the case. "higgsy" is a perfect case in point. (probably a newly-minted PhD, and thus knows everything there is to know about his subject...)
The arrogance factor is the part that's the most difficult part to understand and it's the hardest part to deal with. You'd think they'd show a bit more humility as it relates to alternative cosmology ideas considering the fact that the mainstream requires 95 percent supernatural ad-hoc gap filler to get their ideas to work right, and at least half the time that there's a new observation, they're always "surprised" by the results. But *NOOOOOOOO*...........

Brian Koberlein is a perfect embodiment of that pure arrogance in action. Koberlein doesn't even correctly understand the EU/PC ideas that he's bashing on, and/or he has no concept of ethics, one or the other. There is no solar model in EU/PC theory that predicts "no neutrinos" as Koberlein erroneously claimed. That utterly false claim however is the very first criticism that he makes about Thornhill's solar model and Koberlein simply banned all four individuals who pointed out his unprofessional error.

This LIGO scenario is another perfect example of their complete arrogance in action. They arrogantly insist (at 5+ sigma) that two hypothetical invisible entities "merged together" at some great distance from Earth to form another invisible hypothetical entity, which miraculously emits multiple solar masses of energy in the form of invisible hypothetical waves which can only be detected by LIGO equipment, without emitting significant amounts of EM radiation.

They simply cheated in their methodology by giving their own claims a free pass, in stark contrast to every other potential cause of the same signals which were required to pass a process of elimination routine. Worse yet, they expect everyone else on the planet to "disprove" their claims as to cause while literally providing *zero* empirical evidence to support their claim.

In spite of hundreds of man hours spent trying to verify their claims externally to LIGO gear, there were no celestial events observed which might explain a single one of these three signals. There's not even a category for 'unknown cause' in their oversimplified and flawed methodology.

The whole thing is pure arrogance on a stick, and woe to anyone who dares to point out the *numerous* flaws in their methodology. They use any excuse to launch themselves into a personal attack tirade rather than to deal with the criticisms. Selfsim's entire approach in terms of debating this topic at CF was to attack the individual, and the amusing part is that it completely blew up in his face.

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D_Archer
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by D_Archer » Tue Jun 27, 2017 2:51 am

I did not see this posted before (quick search), mainstream article about LIGO >

Was It All Just Noise? Independent Analysis Casts Doubt On LIGO's Detections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... 4294ac5516
But in order to achieve a highly significant signal between the detectors, the LIGO collaboration takes into account how both signals are correlated. If this correlation were not reliable, because (for example) there was the possibility that noise correlations contaminated their data, the statistical significance of the detection would be reduced. In other words, what appears to be a signal might actually be caused merely by fluctuations. How much the statistical significance would be affected
---

Good read, also you can read between the lines, they know the jig is up.

Regards,
Daniel
- Shoot Forth Thunder -

Aardwolf
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Tue Jun 27, 2017 4:47 am

Considering the billions spent on this dead end project why is no-one holding them to the prediction they made in 2008;
"We anticipate that this new instrument will see gravitational wave sources possibly on a daily basis, with excellent signal strengths, allowing details of the waveforms to be observed and compared with theories of neutron stars, black holes, and other astrophysical objects moving near the speed of light," says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/advanced-li ... ation-1406

They made a prediction based on the theory and the evidence to support the theory is nowhere to be found. They shouldn't need to torture the data to find evidence, there should be hundreds of events by now.

Essentially the experiment has failed and the theory is falsified.

Aardwolf
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Tue Jun 27, 2017 4:47 am

Considering the billions spent on this dead end project why is no-one holding them to the prediction they made in 2008;
"We anticipate that this new instrument will see gravitational wave sources possibly on a daily basis, with excellent signal strengths, allowing details of the waveforms to be observed and compared with theories of neutron stars, black holes, and other astrophysical objects moving near the speed of light," says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/advanced-li ... ation-1406

They made a prediction based on the theory and the evidence to support the theory is nowhere to be found. They shouldn't need to torture the data to find evidence, there should be hundreds of events by now.

Essentially the experiment has failed and the theory is falsified.

Higgsy
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Higgsy » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:21 am

D_Archer wrote:I did not see this posted before (quick search), mainstream article about LIGO >

Was It All Just Noise? Independent Analysis Casts Doubt On LIGO's Detections: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... 4294ac5516
---

Good read, also you can read between the lines, they know the jig is up.

Regards,
Daniel
Already discussed in this thread between Saturday June 17th and Monday June 19th with links to the original critiquing paper and the initial LIGO rebuttal. On the face of it, it seems that the critique is in error, because LIGO has shown that the noise correlations found by the critiquing authors are an artefact of the data analysis in the critique paper, but discussions beween the authors of the critique and LIGO are ongoing.
"Every single ion is going to start cooling off instantly as far as I know…If you're mixing kinetic energy in there somehow, you'll need to explain exactly how you're defining 'temperature'" - Mozina

Michael Mozina
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:27 am

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/fo ... stcount=64
Originally Posted by jonesdave116 View Post
Are you saying that Mozina isn't a legitimate scientist? Strewth, never would have figured that one out on my own!
Selfsim:
Well you're right in that its clearly pretty hard to find 'gritty' legitimate scientific scrutiny in the few places left where he can still hang out. (Eg, the only mainstream poster over at TBolts addressing his LIGO nonsense, looks like he's facing summary-execution-by-moderator, following an unjustified moderator attack, when that poster was also simply stating the obvious (as you are above) .. Oh well, I suppose that poster will be in the good company of those who have also gone that way at Tbolts before ..)
You can't make any "gritty" scientific arguments at Reddit, Physics forums, or CF? How could that possibly be my fault?

It's noteworthy IMO that you're both reduced to engaging yourselves in pure personal attacks because neither of you even have a legitimate rebuttal to the various points that were raised in my paper. Instead of attacking the *topic*, you're blatantly engaging yourselves in personal attacks. That behavior is a sure sign of pure desperation.

It's an absolute riot too considering the fact that your last personal attack at CF blew up in your face, and I'm *still* waiting for anyone at ISF to come up with that missing math formula to express a non-zero rate of "reconnection" in Clinger's vacuum contraption which I've been patiently waiting for for over five years. I have no idea if Higsy (or any of the rest of you at ISF) can behave himself/herself (yourselves) or not here at Tbolts, but his/her fate is certainly in their own hands. All he/she has to do is play by the rules and attack *ideas* rather than individuals. Alas, that does seem to be a difficult stumbling block for you folks.
My last post was fairly generally directed at his latest shoot-from-the-hip nonsensical argument about GWs being indistinguishable from glitches .. (thereby providing him with evidence to falsify his "I'm a victim of mainstream ad-homs" routine). The hilarity is, of course, that the argument is singularly his alone, so attacking it, is apparently inseparable from attacking its owner (in the mind of said owner).
Absolutely false. It's entirely possible (not that I've seen you two do it) to destroy an *argument* someone makes without directing any attacks at the *individual*. In fact, that is the *ethical* way to debate any topic and every topic, not that you folks seem to even care. Like I've pointed out here in another thread, the beliefs that you folks hold are simply indefensible scientific positions, so about all you can do is attack *people*. I guess that's what happens when everything you're trying to sell is 'invisible" and/or supernatural.
Anyway, I'm apparently now rendered 'faceless' also .. due to some other delusion he has about my somewhat altruistic efforts 'blowing up' in my face, whilst I was attempting to help him re-orient his wayward misconceptions about the correct physical interpretation of the sigma figure.
Apparently you're not even honest with yourself because your personal attacks were never altruistic, they were always quite sleazy. You're welcome to continue to post at CF, Reddit and Physics Forums AFAIK.

You never scientifically demonstrated anything in our discussions. About the only point that I can actually give you any credit for is for providing *one paper* which describes the *categories* which LIGO simply "made up" in order to try to differentiate between "blip transients" and GW events. Since every distinction they made was simply "assumed/made up", it's not much of an argument IMO, but at least you provided some useful information on that particular topic.

There's still that small matter of pure *cherry picking* of the data that went on to drive up the sigma figure. There's still that small problem related to LIGO's inability to actually eliminate environmental influences with that useless sigma figure. There's still that *major* problem with confirmation bias too. I did give you credit for at least providing a real argument related to blip transients, but alas there is simply no way to verify or falsify their various claims about the nature of blip transients without at least one more detector online. We shouldn't have to wait too long for that issue to be resolvable. If chirps do sometimes show up in two but not all three detectors, your ship is sunk.

IMO it's quite telling that you folks cannot stick to a *topic*. It demonstrates pure desperation, and a complete lack of ethics. All I've asked for is a legitimate scientific rebuttal to the *issues* that I raised. What I've seen thus far however is about 80 percent pure personal attack, about 15 percent lame excuses, and about 5 percent legitimate scientific debate at best case. That's not a track record to be proud of.

As I pointed out in your "coin flip' analogy, by hand selecting only cherry picked data, and by "assuming" whatever you wish, it's possible to trump up a sigma figure to support just about *anything*. It's quite a bit more challenging to actually provide a useful scientific argument.

Care to put your money where your mouth is? Do either of you care to risk your public position on a wager that I go 4 for 4 in the next GW paper, and LIGO fails yet again to link their claims to any observed celestial events? What are the odds that every single celestial event that releases *multiple solar masses of energy* in less than a quarter of a second would be entirely invisible on the EM spectrum?

I'd be a *lot* more impressed with your arguments if the were directed at the *issues* that I've raised rather than the individual, but alas that's just not your "style" at ISF apparently. :( Yawn.
Last edited by Michael Mozina on Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Higgsy
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Higgsy » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:29 am

Aardwolf wrote:Considering the billions spent on this dead end project why is no-one holding them to the prediction they made in 2008;
"We anticipate that this new instrument will see gravitational wave sources possibly on a daily basis, with excellent signal strengths, allowing details of the waveforms to be observed and compared with theories of neutron stars, black holes, and other astrophysical objects moving near the speed of light," says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/advanced-li ... ation-1406

They made a prediction based on the theory and the evidence to support the theory is nowhere to be found. They shouldn't need to torture the data to find evidence, there should be hundreds of events by now.

Essentially the experiment has failed and the theory is falsified.
In what universe is the detection of gravitational waves (with excellent signal strength I hasten to add), evidence against gravitational waves and a failure, and evidence that the theory is falsified? What sort of logic is that? Do you assess all scientific papers that you read using logic like that?

You say there should be hundreds of events by now: on what do you base that statement (other than Marx's obviously optimistic statement in which the word "possibly" is prominent)? Do you have information about the frequency of compact body coalescences within the range of the instrument?
"Every single ion is going to start cooling off instantly as far as I know…If you're mixing kinetic energy in there somehow, you'll need to explain exactly how you're defining 'temperature'" - Mozina

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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:33 am

Aardwolf wrote:Considering the billions spent on this dead end project why is no-one holding them to the prediction they made in 2008;
"We anticipate that this new instrument will see gravitational wave sources possibly on a daily basis, with excellent signal strengths, allowing details of the waveforms to be observed and compared with theories of neutron stars, black holes, and other astrophysical objects moving near the speed of light," says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/advanced-li ... ation-1406

They made a prediction based on the theory and the evidence to support the theory is nowhere to be found. They shouldn't need to torture the data to find evidence, there should be hundreds of events by now.

Essentially the experiment has failed and the theory is falsified.
I can't recall *any* prediction in recent memory that has been made by the mainstream that actually worked as advertised. Not only aren't we seeing anything useful on a daily basis in the LIGO data, evidently they can only find about one noise transient every six months or so which they can even mathematically manipulate enough (via cherry picking data) to make any case at all. Of course they've yet to visually verify any of their claims, and they all rely upon a cherry picking process, so indeed it's been a pretty dismal failure to date. Don't worry though, just like the dark matter fiasco, they're going to spend billions more of our tax dollars so they continue to make these absurd claims about invisible objects emitting invisible energy in galaxies far far away. That's about all they can do apparently.

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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:47 am

Higgsy wrote:
Aardwolf wrote:Considering the billions spent on this dead end project why is no-one holding them to the prediction they made in 2008;
"We anticipate that this new instrument will see gravitational wave sources possibly on a daily basis, with excellent signal strengths, allowing details of the waveforms to be observed and compared with theories of neutron stars, black holes, and other astrophysical objects moving near the speed of light," says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/advanced-li ... ation-1406

They made a prediction based on the theory and the evidence to support the theory is nowhere to be found. They shouldn't need to torture the data to find evidence, there should be hundreds of events by now.

Essentially the experiment has failed and the theory is falsified.
In what universe is the detection of gravitational waves (with excellent signal strength I hasten to add), evidence against gravitational waves and a failure, and evidence that the theory is falsified? What sort of logic is that? Do you assess all scientific papers that you read using logic like that?

You say there should be hundreds of events by now: on what do you base that statement (other than Marx's obviously optimistic statement in which the word "possibly" is prominent)? Do you have information about the frequency of compact body coalescences within the range of the instrument?
In what universe can you call that a "success"? When someone "claims/predicts" that they're going to have *daily* observations in support of their beliefs from *multiple* different types of celestial sources, some of which should be visible and supportable by external hardware, but all they can come up with are three signals over a year and half that all require special pleading about hypothetical invisible objects, and all three claims are based on a blatant cherry picking of data, I wouldn't call that a particularly "successful prediction".

Then again, I'll bet you folks believe that 'dark matter' theory has been a rousing success at LHC, LUX, PandaX, AMDX, etc because you've somehow 'constrained' your snipe hunt. :(

It's just sad IMO to see how many *billions* of dollars that we've wasted, and how little we have to show for any of it. LIGO literally has nothing at all to actually "show" us other than a highly biased methodology that automatically and overwhelmingly favors their own claims and which automatically and overwhelmingly disfavors all other claims as to cause, and a useless sigma figure that doesn't support anything. All the dark matter snipe hunt experiments have shown us is that the mainstream claims about DM are utterly *useless* in terms of making any "successful" predictions. The mainstream has a very peculiar definition of "success".

Aardwolf
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Tue Jun 27, 2017 9:02 am

Higgsy wrote:
Aardwolf wrote:Considering the billions spent on this dead end project why is no-one holding them to the prediction they made in 2008;
"We anticipate that this new instrument will see gravitational wave sources possibly on a daily basis, with excellent signal strengths, allowing details of the waveforms to be observed and compared with theories of neutron stars, black holes, and other astrophysical objects moving near the speed of light," says Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/advanced-li ... ation-1406

They made a prediction based on the theory and the evidence to support the theory is nowhere to be found. They shouldn't need to torture the data to find evidence, there should be hundreds of events by now.Essentially the experiment has failed and the theory is falsified.
In what universe is the detection of gravitational waves (with excellent signal strength I hasten to add), evidence against gravitational waves and a failure, and evidence that the theory is falsified? What sort of logic is that? Do you assess all scientific papers that you read using logic like that?
I think you need to read the post again. Jay Marx made that prediction in 2008. A prediction is not evidence. They predicted daily events. How many events have there been since Advanced LIGO was completed in March 2015? According to Mr Marx there should have been possibly 818.
Higgsy wrote:You say there should be hundreds of events by now: on what do you base that statement (other than Marx's obviously optimistic statement in which the word "possibly" is prominent)? Do you have information about the frequency of compact body coalescences within the range of the instrument?
Of course to a genius such as yourself it may have been obviously optimistic, but most would take the executive director of LIGO’s statements at face value. He said it was a possibility because he thought it was possible. And won a £200m grant based on it.

I'm optimistic that in 2017 the cure for all cancers will be found.
It's possible that in 2017 the cure for all cancers will be found.

Would you agree with both these statements and that they are the same thing?

Aardwolf
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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Tue Jun 27, 2017 10:09 am

Higgsy,

No doubt when G M Harry of the LIGO Laboratory published the article below in 2010 you pointed out his obvious optimism;

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... anced_LIGO
With improved noise levels over initial LIGO, Advanced LIGO will have greater sensitivity to a wide range of astrophysical gravitational waves. The factor of 10 improvement in noise will result in 1000 times the volume of space that can be searched for those sources in the mid-band of Advanced LIGO. These sources would include unmodeled bursts where the details and even nature of sources are not known. This could include supernovas, compact object mergers, neutron star instabilities and cusps in cosmic strings. Searches for inspirals of neutron stars and/or black holes will also be possible over a greater volume than initial LIGO. An individual interferometer will have a direction and source averaged [7] range to binary neutron stars inspirals of around 200 Mpc. This is expected to be sufficient to see up to 40 neutron star inspiral events per year[8]. The equivalent expectation for 10 M black hole binaries is 30 per year, and 10 per year for mixed neutron star–black hole inspirals. The final two estimates have far greater uncertainty than the first due to less information about populations. Advanced LIGO will also be able to observe in the previously inaccessible 10–40 Hz band, allowing longer measurements of light objects such as neutron stars, and the ability to observe signals before coalescence of far more massive objects in the hundreds of solar mass range.
Assuming of course in your dictionary expectation is also a synonym for optimism.

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Re: Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Wed Jun 28, 2017 9:46 pm

http://www.nbi.ku.dk/gravitational-waves/

FYI, It turns out that Ian Harry had a bug in his code which is why he wasn't originally able to produce the results of the paper that was critical toward LIGO. The authors of the paper that was critical to LIGO pointed out Ian's code problem.

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This could end up being the final straw....

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Thu Jun 29, 2017 9:03 pm

I have to sit back and wonder after the whole dark matter fiasco of the past decade, if the impending gravitational wave train wreck isn't going to end up being the last straw the finally broke the camel's back with respect to public "trust" in astronomy as a field of "science".

Astronomers have deviated so far from the real world of empirical laboratory tested physics, that nothing they actually believe in has any useful practical application in the realm of empirical physics. It's become akin to astrology in terms of useful predictive value to the public. Astronomy's only useful purpose has become to defend it's income sources and continue to market itself, much like astrology.

This gravitational wave claim is actually a new low IMO in terms of the mainstream *insisting* (five+ sigma no less) that two invisible objects hundreds of millions of light years away, merged together to create another invisible object and instantly released multiple solar masses of invisible energy in quarter of a second without emitting any measurable EM radiation in the process. They claimed this miraculous invisible "sign from the heavens" happened not once, not twice, but now three straight times in a row, and nothing was even once observed in any of the billions of dollars worth of equipment in the astronomy arsenal in space or on the ground. It was an invisible miraculous emission process from start to finish and it's only claim to fame is that it made some "noise" among a lot of other noise which LIGO cannot identify in couple of trillion dollar pieces of equipment which they won't discuss with the skeptical public. They don't even have a single visual confirmation of a celestial event to their collective names, and yet off they go into the wild blue publishing yonder writing endless papers based on the "discovery" of a new form of invisible stuff. Oy Vey.

The mainstream claims that the fate of the universe is controlled by invisible and impotent on Earth entities galore, and they've added a new one now to attach a few math formulas to. :( It's just sad to watch this all unfold before my eyes. I once had such high hopes for the field of astronomy in my lifetime when I watched humans first walk on the moon as a child. Now as a man in my fifties, I fear for the nonsense that will be handed down to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. We've taken one step forward in terms of engineering and planetary knowledge, and two steps back in terms of useful cosmology theory and knowledge of the universe. Astronomy has become almost completely detached from empirical working physics, and it has therefore become almost entirely irrelevant as a field of science. It's "predictions" about exotic matter to date have been a dismal failure, and the only recent "bright spot" in the industry is gravitational wave theory which is based entirely upon invisible entities and processes to date, and looks to be another inevitable train wreck that is unfolding in slow motion, much like the dark matter fiasco of the last decade.

It's a very sad state of affairs IMO to be watching yet another supernatural billion dollar train wreck unfolding. :(

I really hope that I'm wrong about my prediction that LIGO will be unable to *ever* visually or externally confirm that any of these transient chirp signals are in any way related to real, visually identified celestial events rather than just invisible faerie tales hat are being told by LIGO. LIGO is already 0 for 3 and I suspect that they'll continue to go "0 for X" for the foreseeable future, until the supernatural invisible house of cards finally comes tumbling down. The dark matter train wreck took a decade to destroy itself in slow motion while blowing through billions of dollars to produce no useful "predictive" results. I'd guess that this gravitational wave train wreck won't last more than a decade at best but it's already cost billions, and it has the sum total of three transient chirp signals in background noise from supposedly invisible events to show for all of it's efforts. How many times can they keep trying to sell invisible events to the public?

I simply do not understand why anyone would be reluctant to spend some public funds reproducing Birkeland's full body of lab work using upgraded equipment.

Instead of doing something useful in the lab, they'd rather waste all that money on "tests" that either produced absolutely nothing at all with respect to exotic matter theory to date, or produced a few invisible unidentified flying 'chirp" noise signals in the case of LIGO.

Instead of building something 'practical" that has already produced useful predictive results, the European Union has already committed itself to LISA, and more LIGO stations are being planned and built around the world. This gravitational wave gravy train has all the earmarks of the same "ramping up" spending spree process that went on prior to LHC, LUX and PandaX and other dark matter experiments in Europe coming online, right before the slow motion dark matter train wreck began.

Here we go again......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgo_interferometer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAGRA
http://www.gw-indigo.org/tiki-index.php?page=LIGO-India
https://lisa.nasa.gov/

Billions with B spent looking for invisible stuff, but not even millions with an M spent on a *working* model....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m58-CfVrsN4

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There's a good reddit thread on this topic...

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:03 pm

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/commen ... etections/?

FYI, the paper by the Danish group has been pretty hotly debated over at Reddit. It's a very interesting and worthwhile read IMO. I'm leaning in the direction of the Danish group in terms of their observation of correlated noise at around 6.9 ms. They poked holes in the only online rebuttal that I've seen to date by pointing out several bugs in Ian Harry's software routines. That suggests to me that their methodology was sound, and they understand the noise correlation issues better that some of the folks who are working over at LIGO. That's impressive IMO.

These authors may not be barking up the wrong tree at all if in fact the transient noise signals are caused by US power grid phenomenon that are also responsible for that noise correlation at around 6.9 milliseconds. I'm starting to become a "believer" in their observation of a real noise correlation problem in LIGO's methodology as well as all the other issues raised in my paper.

The aforementioned Reddit thread is well worth reading through IMO, as was the response by the authors to Ian Harry's public criticisms of their paper:

http://www.nbi.ku.dk/gravitational-waves/

It's also worth noting that *of course* the messengers were personally attacked and personally scrutinized for daring to point out any problems in LIGO's methodology. :( The mainstream is so predictable in that way.

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If you've got an hour and a half to kill.....

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Fri Jun 30, 2017 1:38 am

https://cast.itunes.uni-muenchen.de/vod ... cktime.mp4

If you have an hour and a half to kill, this is really an excellent video presentation of some of the problems with LIGO's claims from a hard core signal processing perspective, and from a really dispassionate historical perspective. Dr. Jackson (one of the lead authors of the Danish paper) makes some important statements related to the motivation of being a LIGO "skeptic' and he lays out the history of the different claims of gravitational wave "discoveries" of the past which were later overturned.

I obviously knew about the recent BICEP2 claims which were later shot down, but I had no knowledge of the gravitational wave detection claims that were made by Joseph Weber who apparently published results in the Physical Review letters back in the late 1960's, and early 1970's, claiming to have seen something like 311 gravitational wave events. The mainstream then tried to recreate his "Weber Bar" experiments, only to be unable to replicate his results and his claims of "discovery" were later overturned. Evidently Jackson actually heard Weber talk about his work in the mid 1960's so Jackson certainly understands the history behind gravitational wave detection claims.

The new LIGO stations that are coming online soon are a bit like the old Weber bar experiments where others will now try to duplicate this work. In Weber's case, others were pretty unsuccessful in replicating his work, but the cost to replicate Weber's experiments was *trivial* by today's LIGO standards.

One of the key points that Jackson makes is the danger of using templates when it comes to analyzing these signals, and the other key point is that even knowing that there is a real signal to observe as was the case with the first event, but not the case with the second one, is that it still doesn't determine the *cause* of the candidate signal. He also points out that LIGO isn't even isolated from the environment by a Faraday cage, even though the cost to add one would be reasonably trivial compared to the overall cost of LIGO.

I think it was also interesting to hear both his motives for "questioning" LIGO's claims during the Q&A period, as well as the optimism he holds (similar to mine) in the belief that gravitational waves will eventually be discovered, if not today by LIGO, sometime in the future. I also thought it was interesting that Jackson noted the change in LIGO's attitude in the earlier days when it comes to expecting external corroboration, vs. their more arrogant attitude today where they assume that these signals and results do not require any external support.

Good stuff.....

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