LIGO: Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

[Michael Mozina]

One of the more interesting revelations from my discussion of this topic over at CF is that the 'retraction' rate associated with neutron star mergers is considerably higher, around 42 percent, compared to an overall average of around 28 percent for all events. Since neutron star mergers should typically have a higher likelihood of being supported in the EM spectrum, one cannot help but wonder if this discrepancy between retraction rates is a function of LIGO attempting to 'hedge their bets" and be more conservative with respect to neutron star merger events compared to BBH events. It's a lot easier to "sell" a BBH event as a GW wave event because they have a lower likelihood of being visible in the EM spectrum according to their models.

By the way, a paper suggested by the LIGO team which estimates BBH merger EM emissions can be found here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.07794

The implication is that even BBH mergers have the potential of producing enough EM output to be visible over about 500 Mpc, or about 1.6 billion light years. Those are pretty modest estimates by the way.

Since BBH events can be observed by LIGO over larger distances than neutron star merger events, over 2/3rds of the 03 events (54 of 75) are related to BBH mergers, whereas only about 21 out of 75 involved neutron stars. Assuming sjastro correctly graphed the BBH data, only a few (2?) of the BBH events should theoretically have been visible, but that's still a 0 for 23 failure rate for multimessenger astronomy in 03.

A total of 8 of the 21 neutron star events with at least a 50 percent confidence figure were later retracted and attributed to terrestrial noise, proving conclusively that LIGO has a serious blip transient problem. Even based on the most conservative estimates, that still leaves 11 highly visible signals to look for, and 2-3 BBH mergers that should be visible, making LIGO about 0 for 13 attempts in 03 using the most conservative value. That's certainly not a great batting average. The neutron star failures are particularly perplexing because they have better triangulation capacity now, and neutron stars should be ripped to shreds during the merger process and produce powerful EM emissions and visible jets from both poles of the remaining object. There's really no logical or "good' explanation as to why they were unable to find neutron star merger events in the EM spectrum.

[Cargo]

What if a Neutron Star is impossible? As well has a Black Whatever?

Questions and Theorisms based on Impossible constructs are like arguing about Dungeons & Dragons monsters.

[Michael Mozina]

What if a Neutron Star is impossible? As well has a Black Whatever?

Questions and Theorisms based on Impossible constructs are like arguing about Dungeons & Dragons monsters.

Indeed. That is certainly true.

The thing is.......

Even if you give LIGO every benefit of the doubt with respect to the existence of black holes, neutron stars, the validity of GR theory, and gravitational waves, LIGO has *still* painted themselves into a scientific corner.

Based on their own estimates and claims, they've had at least 13 signals during 03 which could/(should in the case of neutron stars) have produced EM counterparts, 11 of which should have lit up the night sky like a Christmas tree for weeks on end with respect to the technology that we have at our current disposal. They really don't have any logical excuse as to why none of those 11 neutron star signals produced EM emissions that were visible on Earth.

That's the undeniable scientific elephant in the room that is about to crush LIGO. If LIGO cannot replicate multimessenger events, then their claims will inevitably fall apart at the seams. The obvious explanation for this repetitious multimessenger failure is that all of these signals are terrestrial in origin, and none of them are celestial in origin. If they really were celestial signals, then the EM evidence should show it and would show it. It shows *nothing*.

No matter how you slice it or dice it, the lack of multimessenger support is undeniable, and the longer it continues, the less credible LIGO's claims are.

They've already handed out the Nobel however, and they've written thousands of papers on GW waves already, but........

Sooner or later LIGO has to deliver on multimessenger astronomy or it will become obvious that they have made a massive error, and they will become the laughing stock of science.


LIGO's methodology is a *complete disaster*, and the results in 03 speak for themselves.

[Michael Mozina]

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-neutron-s ... adius.html

To do so, they combined a general first-principles description of the unknown behavior of neutron star matter with multi-messenger observations of the binary neutron star merger GW170817. Their results, which appeared in Nature Astronomy today, are more stringent by a factor of two than previous limits and show that a typical neutron star has a radius close to 11 kilometers. They also find that neutron stars merging with black holes are in most cases likely to be swallowed whole, unless the black hole is small and/or rapidly rotating. This means that while such mergers might be observable as gravitational-wave sources, they would be invisible in the electromagnetic spectrum.

So there you have it. LIGO now claims that black holes can swallow neutron stars without emitting anything in the EM spectrum in most cases.

This has to be the single most "rigged" big of nonsense in the history of physics. LIGO didn't have any logical excuses for not being able to "see" BHNS mergers, and they missed 5 of them in 03, so they simply 'made up" an excuse.

Consider the implications now. Not only are we told that GW waves exist, but they're likely to be invisible in 90+ of all cases. Now LIGO has a "free pass" on everything other than BNS merger events, and they can't be held externally accountable for 90+ percent of all events.

This is like watching an episode of "ghost hunters".

[Cargo]

Not to mention the fact that a neutron has a half-life of ~10 minutes. The magically fantasy ride continues, as long as the funding keeps coming.

[JP Michael]

Consider the implications now. Not only are we told that GW waves exist, but they're likely to be invisible in 90+ of all cases. Now LIGO has a "free pass" on everything other than BNS merger events, and they can't be held externally accountable for 90+ percent of all events.

This is like watching an episode of "ghost hunters".

This should be an incredibly disturbing revelation for those with an interest in scientific integrity.

This is a sad day for science, indeed.

[Zyxzevn]

Consider the implications now. Not only are we told that GW waves exist, but they're likely to be invisible in 90+ of all cases. Now LIGO has a "free pass" on everything other than BNS merger events, and they can't be held externally accountable for 90+ percent of all events.

Wait..

A new black hole merger is coming..


It is a "Prrrt" signal.

[Cargo]

observable as gravitational-wave sources.. invisible in the electromagnetic spectrum

Wait! WTFO! This must be a joke?! The EM spectrum is literally EVERYTHING we see in the Entire Universe.

Now, unless they start claiming to have discovered SubSpace, and we can get on to the the Star Trek wordline, I'm all for it. But otherwise, this is a complete muli-billion $$$ decade long Get Out of Jail Free card. Everyone who works on LIGO should be fired.

[Michael Mozina]

Consider the implications now. Not only are we told that GW waves exist, but they're likely to be invisible in 90+ of all cases. Now LIGO has a "free pass" on everything other than BNS merger events, and they can't be held externally accountable for 90+ percent of all events.

This is like watching an episode of "ghost hunters".

This should be an incredibly disturbing revelation for those with an interest in scientific integrity.

This is a sad day for science, indeed.

I've been disturbed with LIGO's lack of scientific integrity since they published their first GW paper and falsely claimed that there were no vetoes present within an hour of the event, when in fact the specific signal in question was vetoed within 18 seconds of being uploaded to the GraceDB database. LIGO has never been forthcoming with any specific details related to that veto either. That's downright disturbing.

[Michael Mozina]

By the way....

Gravitational waves are the new 'sacred cow' in astronomy for good reason. The LCDM models is falling apart at the seams now. Not only is there 5+ sigma evidence (via the Hubble constant) that their model is broken, they cannot even reach a consensus on how to fix it yet. Furthermore the highest redshift observations stubbornly refuse to agree with their predictions. They're finding massive mature galaxies and huge quasars in the distant universe where no such things are predicted to exist in their model. The evidence of galaxy evolution is completely falling apart now, and JWST is about to deliver a death blow on that front, and some of them already know it.

Gravitational waves are therefore the only thing they have real hope about right now. It's "new and exciting' material to sink their mathematical teeth into. They are therefore willing to overlook the various and numerous problems in LIGO's methodology, and overlook their *blatant* misrepresentation of the veto that was present during that first signal because it gives them something to be excited about and be optimistic about.

It's a pitiful way to do "science' of course, but that's where things stand. The surest way to irritate the mainstream is to dare to question their new sacred cow, or point out that veto fiasco. It's met with *instant* anger and emotional distress galore.

The problem for the mainstream is that things are reaching a critical mass because of new technology. Better equipment is producing evidence that runs counter to their beliefs and they have no idea how to deal with it yet. Denial and anger have become the two self defense mechanisms of choice.

Regardless of how blatantly their DM "tests" bite the dust and regardless of how obvious it's become that they have a serious Hubble constant conflict, they simply don't have a solution that doesn't require them to throw out everything they think they know about the universe and start over and their fear of starting over precludes them from taking that route.

It's far better if they simply direct their attention to gravitational waves and pretend that this topic is going to save them. It won't do that of course, but in the meantime we're likely to see a lot of bizarre rationalizations over their lack of consistent multimessenger support like we're seeing right now. There's ample evidence that even BBH should be visible in *some* (less than 500 Mpc) scenarios, but they rationalize away those problems anyway. LIkewise, there is *direct* evidence that BNS mergers should produce EM emissions over weeks at a time, yet they rationalize away those problems too (God only knows how or why). Most recently they've been trying to sweep the BHNS merger scenario problems under the rug by claiming that neutron stars would be swallowed whole without emitting EM radiation. That's absurd of course, but hey, what are their alternatives?

They therefore have begun to "assume" that black holes don't' spin very fast when they merge with neutron stars in spite of overwhelming and published evidence to the contrary:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... 80e9577735
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/ ... t-einstein

What we're witnessing now is a complete meltdown of logic and common sense in mainstream circles. We're seeing the mainstream backtrack and contradict themselves constantly. One week they tell us that black holes have be spinning at close to the speed of light. The next week they tell us that black holes can't spin fast because we didn't see any EM emissions from LIGO BHNS events. The rationalizations are becoming more desperate and self conflicted by the day.

[Michael Mozina]

https://www.ligo.org/detections/GW190412.php
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.08342

We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05:30:44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a ~30 solar mass black hole merged with a ~8 solar mass black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.17 and 0.59 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed on GW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein's general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs.

Emphasis mine. What the hell is a 'dimensionless spin magnitude"?

And so it begins. If you read LIGO's new paper on gw190412 they've essentially added a whole new basket full of mathematical models to allow them to "fit" nearly every possible 'signal' to hit their detectors, to a black hole merger event of some exotic sort. New mass parameters, new merger angles, new "dimensionless spin magnitude merger" options galore!

It's pretty much "anything goes' at LIGO now. All they need is to see *anything at all* in multiple detectors and they'll figure out some bizarre way to insist that it's caused by an invisible celestial event.

They've got a couple years now to keep making this stuff up as they see fit, but eventually they'll have to start the 04 run and we'll see if they're actually capable of replicating multimessenger astronomy, or if their merger claims are just utter "made up" BS.

Within GR, every compact binary coalescence signal includes higher multipoles and the prior odds in favor of their presence in the signal are infinite. We therefore focus on the Bayes factors and do not discuss the odds ratio (which is the Bayes factor multiplied by the prior odds).

Think about the nature of these claims for a moment. There's actually *zero* external evidence that these signals are celestial in origin to begin with. LIGO has added so many exotic new mathematical merger options to choose from (virtually infinite), there's almost no possible way that a given "blip transient" cannot be mathematically associated with some invisible celestial event. There's no external way to validate any of these claims. There's no possible way to even begin to refute their claims since they haven't even released the raw data yet. They're pretty much able to do as they please because they've excused themselves of the need for multimessenger support entirely.

This really does have the Joseph Weber feel to it, only this time it's unclear how long it might take for these claims to be carefully scrutinized by any external party. It's not like one can spend a few thousand dollars to "test" their claims as one might test Joseph Webber's claims. One would literally have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and spend multiple decades to build a "LIGO bar" to even see if it produces similar signals and it still wouldn't tell you if a given "signal' was celestial in origin without external EM confirmation. Japan has been working on designing, planning and building a new "Kagra" detector for almost two decades now, and as of today they're not even in the same relative sensitivity ballpark of Virgo yet, let alone LIGO. It could be another 5 years before Kagra works all their kinks out too.

The potential for scientific abuse/error is simply off scale at this point, and there is no legitimate scientific way to externally validate any of these claims in the absence of EM confirmation.

[BeAChooser]

The potential for scientific abuse/error is simply off scale at this point, and there is no legitimate scientific way to externally validate any of these claims in the absence of EM confirmation.

It's all about keeping the money flowing and their control over the organizations providing it.

I fear we're going to need aliens to show up and tell them they're wrong to stop this scam.

[Michael Mozina]

The potential for scientific abuse/error is simply off scale at this point, and there is no legitimate scientific way to externally validate any of these claims in the absence of EM confirmation.

It's all about keeping the money flowing and their control over the organizations providing it.

I fear we're going to need aliens to show up and tell them they're wrong to stop this scam.

You might be right. It's bad enough that the big bang theory is a metaphysical fiasco, but with LIGO just making it up as they go, there's nothing scientifically legitimate about astronomy anymore. It's as bad as astrology at this point.

I would have thought that a complete lack of a single mutlimessenger event in 03 would have given LIGO and mainstream astronomers some concern, but apparently they''re just doubling down on the wild claims and various assumptions that they're making and it's full speed ahead, EM confirmation be damned. Wow.

I guess I should have seen this coming when LIGO intentionally misrepresented the facts about the veto of the signal in their original GW wave paper. That veto fiasco showed a complete lack of ethics on LIGO's part, and all their actions since then confirm that shady behavior.

[Maol]

Swift mission tallied water from interstellar comet Borisov

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-swift-mis ... comet.html

NASA’s Swift Mission Tallied Water From Interstellar Comet Borisov

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... et-borisov

[Michael Mozina]

Swift mission tallied water from interstellar comet Borisov

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-swift-mis ... comet.html

NASA’s Swift Mission Tallied Water From Interstellar Comet Borisov

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... et-borisov

Be that as it may, I'm not sure what that has to do with LIGO.