Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

[Zyxzevn]

The problem is that:
IF gravity bends time and space (for which there was a null result),
IF black-holes exist (besides the singularity in the maths, and some alternative explanations),
IF black holes can collapse in each other
(which seems a very rare event, that should produce a lot of hawking radiation),
IF their collapse causes gravitational waves (which is still not proven),
IF the detectors can actually measure these waves,
IF the signal is actually matching the entire predicted shape (which is not entirely true in the current finds),
IF the signal is not caused by the standing waves in the system,
IF the signal is not caused by the filters,
and IF the signal-correlation is not caused by other means (see high correlation in raw data),
the Sigma value is still much too high.

The noise level is so big that this Sigma value has nothing to do with real science any more.

[Michael Mozina]

The problem is that:
IF gravity bends time and space (for which there was a null result),
IF black-holes exist (besides the singularity in the maths, and some alternative explanations),
IF black holes can collapse in each other
(which seems a very rare event, that should produce a lot of hawking radiation),
IF their collapse causes gravitational waves (which is still not proven),
IF the detectors can actually measure these waves,
IF the signal is actually matching the entire predicted shape (which is not entirely true in the current finds),
IF the signal is not caused by the standing waves in the system,
IF the signal is not caused by the filters,
and IF the signal-correlation is not caused by other means (see high correlation in raw data),
the Sigma value is still much too high.

The noise level is so big that this Sigma value has nothing to do with real science any more.

I'm the first to admit that it's a "long shot" at best case. Even if LIGO does link a visual celestial event to a specific noise pattern in the LIGO equipment in a future paper, it's unlikely to change my opinions about the scientifically sloppy nature of their previous methodology.

On the other hand, I'm open minded enough to realize that there is at least *some possibility* that LIGO might detect an effect of a distant cosmological event. I'll just have to wait and see if they can actually deliver on their promise of multimessenger astronomy, and they can come up with something that actually deviates from the null hypothesis. Until that happens I'll remain a skeptic, and I reserve the right to complain about their methodology in any future papers too.

I'm pretty sure however if LIGO starts repeatedly demonstrating a link between their noise patterns and events in space that I'll become a 'believer' in gravitational waves. I like GR theory, and I'd be happy for GR if that actually happens. I realize that it's a long shot for a variety of reasons, but I'd like to believe that I'm open minded enough, and fair enough to recognize when I'm wrong. I've certainly been a vocal critic of LIGO to date, but I'll be happy to give them credit when/if credit is due too.

Still, this is a whole lot of wild speculation over a vague rumor that was posted on twitter.

I'm still waiting to hear LIGO explain the correlated noise problem before, during and after the signal(s) in question.

[Webbman]

2 black holes becoming one supermassive blackhole and shockwaves felt?

what if I replace the words black hole with a similar functioning structure like a banking dynasty. Would the story make more sense or less?

[comingfrom]

Or, Bayer and Monsanto?

[Michael Mozina]

http://www.nature.com/news/rumours-swel ... ng-1.22482

If the rumors are even the least bit accurate, there seems to be a full court press to focus various satellites on the galaxy NGC 4993, to observe an event that occurred on August 17th (SGRB170817A). I guess the question will be how well "correlated" the LIGO correlated noise was to the gamma ray burst, and whether or not the gamma ray burst event triangulates out correctly in the various LIGO detectors.

On 23 August, a commenter on the blog of astrophysicist Peter Coles, of Cardiff University in the UK, noted that NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory had jumped into the action, too. The Chandra website contains a public record of an observation made on 19 August. The telescope pointed at celestial coordinates in the galaxy NGC 4993 and observed an event called SGRB170817A — indicating ‘short GRB of 2017-August-17’. The most revealing part of the report is the “trigger criteria” section, which explains the reason for over-riding any previously scheduled observation to turn the telescope in that direction. It says: “Gravitational wave source detected by aLIGO, VIRGO, or both.”

I doubt I'll ever change my opinions about the sloppy methodology that LIGO has used to date, but if there's any substance to this particular event, LIGO has a golden opportunity to 'do it right' from the perspective of science. I'll keep an open mind because I'm fond of GR theory and it would be exciting to open up the door on multimessenger astronomy. It would be really cool if we learn to observe the universe through gravitational waves.

Admittedly I'm still pretty skeptical, and they'll have to convince me that this wasn't a coincidence, but at least this event might offer LIGO a chance to redeem themselves IMO.

[Zyxzevn]

Gravitational waves may oscillate, just like neutrinos

Gravitational waves do not only bend space and time, and our minds, but also our theories.

I have to one more IF in my condition list (above).
IF-10: IF the gravitational waves are real, they are completely different from what theory predicts.

The face on Mars suddenly doesn't feel so weird any more.

[Michael Mozina]

Gravitational waves may oscillate, just like neutrinos

Gravitational waves do not only bend space and time, and our minds, but also our theories.

I have to one more IF in my condition list (above).
IF-10: IF the gravitational waves are real, they are completely different from what theory predicts.

The face on Mars suddenly doesn't feel so weird any more.

It seems to me that astronomy has drifted so far away from empirical physics that it's pretty much 'anything goes' with respect to new ideas, with the single exception of EU/PC empirical alternatives of course.

It's more likely such a wave from spinning electric objects results in an "AC" sort of process.

I'm still curious to find out if LIGO is ever going to respond to the Danish teams discovery of correlated noise at the same time delay as the supposed 'signal', before, during and after the "signal'.

I'm also curious to find out if there is any truth the 'rumor' that LIGO might have an example of 'multimessenger astronomy'.

So far I've seen a lot of promises from LIGO about a "handbook" they expected to release related to the Danish teams findings and nothing for months. They may be 'distracted' over their supposed multimessenger signal of course, but the Danish paper still warrants a response.

[Zyxzevn]

Another Blimp.
Now they found a signal at another detector too. 14/8/2017.
GW170814 : A three-detector observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole coalescence
The paper.

My view on the paper:
Still the noise ratio is very large again. Larger than previous "detections".
The Virgo detector has the highest noise of all. I am not sure if we can even talk of a signal.
It seems that they simply lowered their "standards" to include the other detector.
No raw signals analysed yet.

All filtered signals in the paper have similar noise signatures of the previous signals.
They show the same resonating signals, which are part of the LIGO system.
Also, the noise shows a lot of correlation (same characteristics).
The "signals" of the different detectors show clear differences in amplitude.
This means that the "detection" might just be a side-effect of the system and the filters.

Livingstone's signal is > 0.01 s later, which is close to the maximum distance that is acceptable
in this kind of detection (and may not even be possible).
That would mean that the signal is coming very close
from the direction of Hanford (relative to Livingstone).
And at the same time Virgo (italy) is in sync with Hanford.
Which looks like an impossible combination, because Italy is in another direction in 3D.
This fact gets a bit hidden in the statistical analysis. Smart guys.
But you can see it in the very small overlap at page 5.
I wonder if such an overlap is even possible if you take the actual signals,
instead of the spread-out statistical version.

Well, it seems that they have proven themselves wrong this time.
I expect a lot of new theories about weird dimensions or dark matter
interfering with gravitational waves soon.

[Michael Mozina]

http://www.nature.com/news/rumours-swel ... ng-1.22482

An hour later, astronomer Peter Yoachim of the University of Washington in Seattle tweeted that LIGO had seen a signal with an optical counterpart (that is, something that telescopes could see) from a galaxy called NGC 4993, which is around 40 million parsecs (130 million light years) away in the southern constellation

For the record, the "rumor" mill was apparently entirely unreliable. No visual counterpart was announced as "rumored", and the source is reported to be 540 Mpc away, not from NGC 4993 at only 40 Mpc. Peter was an unreliable source all the way around.

http://www.virgo-gw.eu/
https://tds.virgo-gw.eu/GW170814
https://dcc.ligo.org/P170814/public

Follow-up observations of GW170814 were conducted by 25 facilities in neutrinos [71–73], gamma-rays [74–82], X-rays [83–86], and in optical and near-infrared [87–99]. No counterpart has been reported so far.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, they still haven't made good on their promise of multimessenger astronomy. Even though they originally predicted to find more neutron star merger scenarios than BH-BH scenarios, LIGO only ever locates entirely 'invisible' events. Based on their original estimates they should have seen something like 6 or 7 NS related mergers by now, but noooooo!

LIGO is now 0 for 4 in terms of delivering on multimessenger astronomy, and I'm now 4 for 4 in terms of "predicting' that outcome, and probably more like 10 for 10 in terms of LIGO's so called "signals" all being invisible. Lucky guess on my part?

This new paper also seems to "assume" that background noise cannot be correlated between detectors and it also seems to suffer from the same lack of an external confirmation requirement as was applied to every other potential cause of the noise. It should be interesting to see what the Danish team has to say about this most recent paper and this more recent "signal".

This does mark the first time that all three detectors observed the same noise pattern, but this paper appears to suffer from all of the very same confirmation bias problems of all the other previous LIGO papers, starting with their continued inability to differentiate between gravitational waves, and correlated "blip transient" events.

Joseph Weber still holds a several hundred signal lead in terms of having published the most "uncorroborated" claims of the observation of "gravitational waves, but LIGO is catching up slowly but surely. It's noteworthy that these new results are also entirely consistent with the null hypothesis, just as were all of Joseph Webber's claims and all of LIGO's previous claims. LIGO still cannot differentiate its various claims from the null hypothesis. How incredibly disappointing after all the rumor "hype". Same invisible dance, different invisible tune.

[Michael Mozina]

If there's a "silver lining' in this latest "cry invisible black hole wolf" LIGO paper, it's the fact that LIGO and VIRGO are tightening the noose around their own neck with respect to eliminating large portions of the sky with three detectors online. They have fewer excuses *not* to be able to observe merger events since they can now triangulate them to such a reasonably small area.

If these signals are in fact caused by *anything* other than distant mass mergers in space, they're making it more obvious that they have a problem because nothing is going to show up in the regions they expect them to, and this pattern of invisibility will repeat itself over and over and over again. We're already up to four times in a row so far. This one is more damning IMO because LIGO now has a dedicated telescope at their constant disposal, and they had 25 teams working on locating an event. This supposedly occurred at a very specific time, and in a reasonably well defined area of space, but all to no avail. Pure dumb bad luck for LIGO, or just bad LIGO assumptions as to the cause of these correlated noise patterns?

IMO it's less likely now that we'll have a 'fluke event' that just so happens to occur around the same time as a candidate signal and the celestial event will be obligated to take place in a much smaller window.

IMO LIGO is painting themselves right into a corner. With better triangulation potential with VIRGO, they really have no logical scientific excuse for never seeing them.

If however, these correlated noise patterns are not actually celestial in origin, it's perfectly obvious why LIGO is never able to demonstrate a celestial origin of any particular noise pattern.

This even was the first time that LIGO had the ability to 'narrow down' the search window a whole order of magnitude better than before. They also had a dedicated telescope to work with for the first time too. Even still, with 25 teams trying to corroborate the claim, they all came up completely empty.

That's four gravitational wave "immaculate conceptions" in a row, where multiple solar masses of energy were supposedly released in a 1/4 of a second, yet miraculously none of these four events emitted enough light to be observed on Earth. Fishy story bro.

I can't wait to see the Danish team's analysis of this event. It should be entertaining.

[Michael Mozina]

https://phys.org/news/2017-10-nobel-phy ... tists.html

It looks like the key to winning the Nobel Prize in astronomy is to postulate a new, entirely *invisible* entity, and to make up a ridiculous story about why we can't actually directly 'observe' anything.

Dark matter, dark energy, invisible naked, uncharged black holes, and invisible gravitational waves are all the rage these days. The one thing they all share in common: none of them can be directly observed or falsified.

Forget the fact that the winners of the Nobel Prize for "dark matter' actually botched their 2006 stellar mass estimates by 3 to 20 times in that now infamous bullet cluster study. They were already awarded their Nobel Prize, so their claim must be true anyway.

Forget the fact that larger SN1A studies showed a less than 5 sigma likelihood that "dark energy" even exists to start with, that Nobel prize was already awarded too, so dark energy must exist too.

in 2017 we must ignore the fact that LIGO has *still* never delivered on their promise of multimessenger astronomy as promised, and they have a correlated noise problem between the detectors which they have never explained. Never mind the fact that LIGO erroneously claimed that no vetoes were present within an hour of the event when the event itself was actually vetoed within 18 seconds. Why? Because the Nobel Prize was already awarded for the discovery of gravitational waves so it must be 'true'.

The pattern is to rush to judgement about invisible stuff, they hand out the Nobel Prizes, and then they ignore any and all data that conflicts with their dogma.

[Zyxzevn]

It looks like the key to winning the Nobel Prize in astronomy is to postulate a new, entirely *invisible* entity, and to make up a ridiculous story about why we can't actually directly 'observe' anything.

I did not expect anything else.
Ignoring and pretending is the new science.

I think that their "chirp"-shape is a side product of the filters that they used.
Its timing is related to a phase-change in their resonance chamber.
The frequency of this resonance is clearly visible in the high frequencies of the "signal".

[Michael Mozina]

It looks like the key to winning the Nobel Prize in astronomy is to postulate a new, entirely *invisible* entity, and to make up a ridiculous story about why we can't actually directly 'observe' anything.

I did not expect anything else.
Ignoring and pretending is the new science.

I think that their "chirp"-shape is a side product of the filters that they used.
Its timing is related to a phase-change in their resonance chamber.
The frequency of this resonance is clearly visible in the high frequencies of the "signal".

I didn't expect anything else either. I had a "glimmer" of hope when the Danish team found evidence of correlated noise before, during and after the so called 'signals', on the exact same delay times no less, but LIGO simply ignored that paper and that problem while they waited for the Nobel.

When you start adding up all the completely "invisible' and metaphysical elements of mainstream astronomy, they simply boggle the mind. They need everything from uncharged invisible naked black holes releasing invisible gravitational waves, which flow through invisible forms of matter. They need invisible forms of energy, invisible space expansion genies, and invisible inflation gnomes, all of which cannot be observed directly, or demonstrated in a lab in real cause/effect experimentation.

Even *with* all that invisible metaphysical nonsense, they still can't explain something as simple as the solar corona, a full century after Birkeland explained it to them, and simulated it for them based on circuit theory.

The LCDM model is a disaster of a cosmology model. It doesn't even have any "local' implication as it relates to what we might expect to observe in a lab or inside our solar system. The only metaphysical element of LCDM which could be tested in the lab has been a complete *bust*. The rest of their metaphysical claims aren't even 'testable" at all.

LIGO took it one irrational step further by removing any need at all to even bother to correlate a mathematical model or theory to any observable event in space. Actual celestial observations are now entirely optional when discussing their cosmology model and it's menagerie of invisible supernatural friends.

[Cargo]

With hardly a few days between the two press releases, it was already a forgone conclusion that the 3rd shout from the echo chamber would bestow the Nobel Rubber Duck Stamp upon a few excellent noblemen.
The whole charade is beyond reality just like their black magic claims.

In the spewing of sound-bites about warping space and infinite conclusions, I noticed an interesting claim.
'That they can measure the flex of the crust due to the moon'.

I find this pretty cool thing in itself, and have to wonder if the details of this claim are ever made evident. Especially if they claim to be able to 3D position an echo source in interstellar warped space. I have to wonder:

Where does the LIGO Trifecta "point to" for the moons position? Does it point to 'real time location' or 'C speed time location'?

And why aren't they using this thing to pinpoint every war bomb explosion on the planet in real time.
Where's the signal from the NK Nuke Test hey?

I guess selective listening to the noise of the universe makes it difficult to be listening at the 'right time'.

LIGO, the longest tubes of gobbledygook ever created. There must be some other reason they needed this devices.

[Michael Mozina]

With hardly a few days between the two press releases, it was already a forgone conclusion that the 3rd shout from the echo chamber would bestow the Nobel Rubber Duck Stamp upon a few excellent noblemen.
The whole charade is beyond reality just like their black magic claims.

https://www.christianforums.com/threads ... t-71836005

Yep, the rubber stamp process was certainly predictable but there's still a huge elephant in the room with respect to LIGO's promises to deliver on "multimessenger astronomy", aka "null hypothesis differentiation". So far everything LIGO has published is 100 percent consistent with the null hypothesis and 100 percent inconsistent with LIGO's promise to deliver on multimessenger astronomy.

LIGO has at least another year now to pretend they've actually accomplished something important, but when the upgrades are complete, and they start their next observational run, reality will set in again. IMO the fact they're actively avoiding the Danish team's observation of correlated noise between the detectors, before, during and after the so called "signal" says it all. They have no real observational evidence that any of their noise patterns are celestial in origin. In fact, there's evidence in the data that the correlated noise "signal" is *not* related to a single 'mass merger' event, rather that "signal" is simply a very small subset of a correlated noise problem that LIGO has never identified.

LIGO can't and won't deliver on multimessenger astronomy unless they're actually right, and there's no visible celestial evidence that they are right. LIGO still has that multimessenger monkey on their back, prize or no prize.