Last week, the science world was abuzz with the news that gravitational waves had been discovered thanks to the LIGO project and the team of international scientists that made it possible. At WUWT, I covered the story here, saying that it was a “triumph of science”. Indeed it was, and still is, and the effects of this discovery on science will ripple into the future for decades and centuries to come.
I woke in the middle of the night as I sometimes do, for no particular reason except that my brain doesn’t always cooperate with my body when it comes time to sleep, and the LIGO project was on my mind, partly due to an email I got from a fellow who wanted to tell me about a colleague in China who was talking about Gravitons and the LIGO announcement here. It got me was thinking about how wonderful it was that we could detect a gravitational wave from the merging of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago:
A computer simulation shows the collision of two black holes, a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. LIGO detected gravitational waves, or ripples in space and time generated as the black holes spiraled in toward each other, collided, and merged. This simulation shows how the merger would appear to our eyes if we could somehow travel in a spaceship for a closer look. It was created by solving equations from Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity using the LIGO data.
The two merging black holes are each roughly 30 times the mass of the sun, with one slightly larger than the other. Time has been slowed down by a factor of about 100. The event took place 1.3 billion years ago.
The stars appear warped due to the incredibly strong gravity of the black holes. The black holes warp space and time, and this causes light from the stars to curve around the black holes in a process called gravitational lensing. The ring around the black holes, known as an Einstein ring, arises from the light of all the stars in a small region behind the holes, where gravitational lensing has smeared their images into a ring.
The gravitational waves themselves would not be seen by a human near the black holes and so do not show in this video, with one important exception. The gravitational waves that are traveling outward toward the small region behind the black holes disturb that region’s stellar images in the Einstein ring, causing them to slosh around, even long after the collision. The gravitational waves traveling in other directions cause weaker, and shorter-lived sloshing, everywhere outside the ring.
Wikipedia’a article on LIGO notes that on 11 February 2016, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced the first observation of a gravitational wave.The signal was named GW150914.The waveform showed up on 14 September 2015, within just two days of when the Advanced LIGO detectors started collecting data after their upgrade. It matched the predictions of general relativity for the inward spiral and merger of a pair of black holesand subsequent ‘ringdown’ of the resulting single black hole. The observations demonstrated the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.
These plots show the signals of gravitational waves detected by the twin LIGO observatories at Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The signals came from two merging black holes, each about 30 times the mass of our sun, lying 1.3 billion light-years away. The top two plots show data received at Livingston and Hanford, along with the predicted shapes for the waveform. These predicted waveforms show what two merging black holes should look like according to the equations of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, along with the instrument’s ever-present noise. Time is plotted on the X-axis and strain on the Y-axis. Strain represents the fractional amount by which distances are distorted. As the plots reveal, the LIGO data very closely match Einstein’s predictions. The final plot compares data from both detectors. The Hanford data have been inverted for comparison, due to the differences in orientation of the detectors at the two sites. The data were also shifted to correct for the travel time of the gravitational-wave signals between Livingston and Hanford (the signal first reached Livingston, and then, traveling at the speed of light, reached Hanford seven thousandths of a second later). As the plot demonstrates, both detectors witnessed the same event, confirming the detection.
This is indeed a wonderful and marvelous thing, as is the dual LIGO observatory itself; one in Hanford, WA and the other in Livingston, LA, two identical observatories separated by 3,002 kilometers (1,865 miles) so that this distance corresponds to a difference in gravitational wave arrival times of up to ten milliseconds, making it possible to do triangulation to determine an approximate location.
Wikipedia also had this note about the facility and it’s history:
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory to detect gravitational waves. Cofounded in 1992 by Kip Thorne and Ronald Drever of Caltechand Rainer Weiss of MIT, LIGO is a joint project between scientists at MIT, Caltech, and many other colleges and universities. Scientists involved in the project and the analysis of the data for gravitational-wave astronomyare organised by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration which includes more than 900 scientists worldwide, as well as 44,000 active Einstein@Home users. LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), with important contributions from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Max Planck Society of Germany, and the Australian Research Council. By mid-September 2015 “the world’s largest gravitational-wave facility” completed a 5-year US$200-million overhaul at a total cost of $620 million.
That’s quite an endeavor, combining global collaboration, two large nearly identical facilities, and decades of research and construction. It struck me that it wasn’t just human energy that went into making LIGO a reality, but scads of real energy, to support design, construction, and operation of LIGO over that time.
Speaking of construction, here’s a photo from 2011, showing what looks to be a vacuum vessel being offloaded from a semi truck by a portable crane truck. Obviously, the vessel was built elsewhere and trucked in, and you can say that about essentially every aspect of the two observatories, as there was nothing but barren land in their place before.
It looks like one of these units:
Imagine the energy involved, not just in construction and transportation to the site by truck, but in maintaining a near perfect vacuum in the 4KM dual legs of the observatory, such as the one seen below:
The amount of power needed is substantial, and it must be clean and non-intermittent as this internal newsletter for the Livingston site suggests:
One of the challenges of our rural location is the availability of clean and stable electrical power. Initially we found our electrical supply experienced some instabilities. This prevented the proper operation of the air conditioning system and some of the vacuum pumps. As mentioned in Cecil Franklin’s article above, the local power company which supplies the observatory, DEMCO, has completed construction of a separate substation dedicated solely for LIGO use. This feature has dramatically improved the quality of electrical power and all electrical systems are now operational. In addition, this improvement significantly reduced power outages due to thunder and lightning storms. Thank you, DEMCO!
Imagine if the power goes out. How long would it take to re-establish the vacuum in that facility?
A quick look at DEMCO Electrical COOP in Louisiana says they use coal-fired power plants, such as:
The coal-fired Big Cajun Power Plant located in Pointe Coupee Parish was built jointly by Louisiana’s electric cooperatives in the 1970s to provide wholesale electrical power to cooperative members across the state. Today, the facility is owned by Louisiana Generating, a subsidiary of NRG Energy.
And, a plot of power generation sources in Louisiana suggests that fossil fuel (coal and gas) and nuclear power make up the lion’s share of power generation in the state:
For the Hanford LIGO site, the Washington state power generation balance is different, using more hydro than coal or gas:
The point here is that LIGO couldn’t operate without a stable power supply, and couldn’t run on a power grid fed primarily on solar or wind, but instead uses the most hated power generation methods of environmentalists; coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro. Try doing this sort of science with intermittent solar and wind power – you can’t.
This need for stable power to run LIGO may have been a factor as to why the Pasadena, CA based California Institute of Technology chose to put observatories outside of California, where the vagaries of wind and sunshine wouldn’t affect the grid, and they wouldn’t have to worry about environmental political issues as much.
And it seems, the LIGO staff are big fossil fuel enthusiasts themselves, where in Hanford, they have a hot-rod club at the Lab:
Don’t tell the EPA.
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I saw this link from Mile Mathis who explains it as an error of measurement:
http://milesmathis.com/liego.pdf
Very interesting points:
– the measured “chirp” was very small – 0.004 the diameter of a proton – therefore in quantum area
– the event was very far away, 1.3 billion light years -> wondering why don’t we get “chirps” from something happening a bit closer?
“If you study the published diagrams, you find they are reporting a signal peak at around 128 Hz and a strain of 10-21. Again, that strain is so small you should find it highly curious. It puts the signal way
down at the quantum level. ”
Further:
“Intuitively, you would look for atomic wobbles or quantum fluctuations at that level of size, not gravity waves or star collisions. In fact, from the strain alone we can tell that the signal isn’t caused by any motion of the mirrors as a whole: it is caused by motion within the mirrors.
It is basically a signal of the light interacting with the electrons themselves.
Since the frequency is 128 Hz at .42 seconds, that is a frequency of about 300 at one second, and that corresponds to a wavelength of about 10**6 meters.
Well, how long is the antenna? Oh, that’s right, it’s around 10**4 meters (the light has to travel up and back, so the length is doubled). We may then assume the effective wavelength of the electrons inside the mirrors is something around 10**2 m, which, when multiplied by the wavelength of the tunnel, gives us a resonance on the order of 300 Hz.
http://www.science20.com/relativity_and_beyond_it/henri_poincare_predicted_the_existence_of_gravitational_waves_as_early_as_june_5_1905-165539
“That part of Washington and Oregon gets a boatload of rain.”
It is semi-arid getting about 9”/year. This is the nevergreen part of the evergreen state.
The Hanford Reservation is far from barren, it is surrounded by very productive farmland. It is not farmed because the government took it away from the farmers to make make nuclear weapons during WWII. Because of it defense status, the Hanford Reach is the last free flowing part of Columbia River. Great canoe trip.
Also on the Hanford reservation is the Columbia Generating station. When I worked there is was called WNP-2. EnergyNorthwest used to be called woops (WPPSS). Nearby is Priest Rapids, Ice Harbor, McNary Dams. Navigable from Hanford, Idaho to the Pacific.
“Hanford gets coal power from Oregon as well as Washington State:”
You could say Seattle and Portland get coal power in winter but Hanford does not.
An alternative way to look at where power comes from is what happens in a cascading blackout. There was major west coast outage in 1996. Richland and Hanford did not lose power because the nuke plant rode out the transient. Boardman could not send power because of the failure of the transmission sytem.
There is an alternate, alternate way to look at it. All the power plants are running full bore except Boardman. LIGO demand power and Boardman supplies it.
My point is avoid wild leaps of logic about distant places least you sound like the warmist.
I assume that by now everyone has moved along, but I’ll post this just in case
Among LIGO data there is a column marked ‘cwb’, but in the paper there is no mention of it or explanation what it is suppose to represent.
If anyone knows what it might be it should help understand its graphic representation
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LIGO-4.gif
I have added red ‘arcs of a circle’ to emphasise rise and fall of this particular ‘signal’ before and after the event.
Whatever ‘cwb’ data represent, if anything, it is doubtful that it is directly related to collision of two black holes.
search for ‘cwb’ in http://www.leif.org/EOS/Noise-in-LIGO.pdf
The signal is a trigger for possible spikes seen at both observatories. Part of the noise background. The conclusion is that the background cwb noise was not special at the time of the event. Good confirmation of the reality of the GW-signal.
Thanks, interesting article, second half in particular.
Vuc,
I don’t know what the signals represent in terms of Einstein General Relativity, but from all that I have seen in print, including here at WUWT, I get the idea that mathematical theorists have calculated what sort of Einstein waves should be emitted when two black holes collide; IF Einsten is correct.
Now I can imagine two massive objects attracting each other and spiraling towards each other, to eventually collide, and coalesce. Just in a Newtonian universe that seems like a plausible event, that even I could calculate given some time to brush up on stuff long forgotten.
In any case, these teams knew what they were looking for as one type of event, and they knew that it would be distinguishable from a neutron star/black hole collision, or a NS/NS collision.
But the important point is that for a BH/BH collision, they knew what signal to look for, if Einstein is correct, and objects of suitable masses happened to oblige.
I DID pick up a word in the paper, that nobody else has mentioned here that is an important clue:
” Matched Filtering ”
In several places in the paper they say they did matched filtering.
What is matched filtering ?? Well if you are searching for a signal buried in noise, and you know exactly what the signal is supposed to (as they do here) then there is one unique filter that will maximize the signal to noise ratio for THAT SIGNAL, and that filter is the matched filter. It is matched to the KNOWN incoming signal shape.
Now the signals shown in the paper, and in your graphs, look surprisingly like the KNOWN signals that are/were transmitted in the LORAN-C/D navigation system. They are NOT the same, but the are quite alike.
In the Loran-C navigation system, the transmitted signals from land based vertical polarized antennas, have a carrier frequency of 100 KHz, atomic clock referenced. They transmit a series of amplitude modulated pulses of the 100 KHz carrier. So it is NOT frequency chirped, like the two black holes speeding up their spiral.
The amplitude modulated envelope of the loran signal is exactly specified by an exponential function, (I’ll try to find it). It is a rapidly rising front edge, with a longer tail decay. Looks quite like these signals but reversed in time.
The loran system sends a group of eight pulses at one millisecond spacing (there might be a ninth pulse at a different spacing. They have two versions of the 100 KHz carrier 180 degrees out of phase. Some pulses send the + phase, and some send the – phase, and they form a code pattern. The codes are different for different loran stations. And all of the pulses in any loran network are all locked to an atomic clock, so it is accurately known WHEN the pulses are sent.
So the receiver is only turned on to listen WHEN the known pulse is expected to arrive, and the received signal is filtered by a matched filter, that is matched to the known loran pulse shape.
So you are only integrating random noise for the time that you are listening for the pulse, and the receiver is silent between pulses. Well the acquisition problem is to search systematically in time for the known signal that is buried in the noise. The carrier phase encoding helps search for a specific station. Well no need to go through the whole loran strategy; the point is that very efficient noise elimination filtering can be done IF you know the expected shaope of the signal you are looking for.
I used to belong to an organization called “The Wild Goose Association”, which is a bunch of Navigation system geeks, of which I was one, at the time, working on a receiver for the ” OMEGA” global navigation system. Loran-C is a local networks system; Great Lakes, Pacific Coast, Mediterranean etc. Well we all prayed to the Navigating Goose as it migrated.
So the key thing is that the mathematicians who DO understand the math of Einstein waves, if they exist as he theorized, Can predict what a candidate even signal should be so they can program a matched filter (probably all digital) for such a signal.
So people shouldn’t be suspicious that they are salting the mine, by having calculated the expected signal. That is the good news, that they can use the a priori information to aid in the detection.
The Loran-C wavelength is 3,000 meters, and it is commonly picked up by a short antenna, namely an eight foot long vertical whip. It’s nowhere near an efficient dipole, but you do have a ground reflection image as well. It is entirely a ground wave signal, hence the 100 KHz, but you can listen for a sky wave, which would be ionospherically corrupted, but might be easy to find early in the lock on phase.
So I don’t know what all other noise elimination schemery they are using to squish the noise, but that matched filtering mention, is just not some idle chatter; I is important.
G
After reading up a bit on the ‘matched filtering’ I can see point you are making.
In your and your friends example (same for radar and x-ray) frequencies to set up filter for are known in advance.
Since I assume that the spin rate of two near-colliding BHs will depend of the masses involved, and the timing of the event incoming signal parameters are not known in advance, here the selection of the filter’s frequencies has to be after the event
Since this thread has somewhat moved off the fossil fuels use topic….
OK, here’s what is likely just the first in a series of analyses of what LIGO may have measured, and to this layman it appears Wal Thornhill’s presentations of alternative explanations are fully as credible, if not more, than the posited ‘detection of gravitational waves’ that All Must Believe, for fear of being lumped in with The Willfully Ignorant and Illiterate Crowd.
Thornhill also brings forward some basic history, including Albert Einstein’s own view of his mathematical work looking back over his career and thought…as well as some central questions that to my ear require cogent address – not meaningless ‘hand waving’ (or gravitational waving, if you prefer).
In January 2015, There were a few articles in the press that the detection of the pulses was a result of an “injected” signal used to simulate the response to an event so that the researchers could evaluate the system response. There was some question as to whether the signals in question were real or simulations.
At what point in the system was the signal “injected” and what was the wave form of the simulated signal? I presume that the LIGO folks did not generate a disturbance in gravity, rather it was introduced after the interferometer and before the signal processing.
I would like to see what that wave form looked like and how it compared with the “modeling” and the Sept 15th pulse or chirp. What quality control procedures does LIGO have in place such to assuage the speculations that the signal was an errant simulation? Presumably they have a log of the testing regime, and hard lock-outs to prevent tampering and mistakes?
Here is a quote frpme the article:
“However, we must regard this with caution at the moment. In the past, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (Ligo) management team has “injected” signals into the data to check whether the team can actually recognise them. The most recent of these “blind injections” occurred in 2010.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2016/jan/12/gravitational-wave-detection-could-be-a-false-alarm
So, what did the simulation data set look like? How different or similar is it compared with the model and the real signal?
“The fake is introduced in a particularly smart way: the injection team is allowed to directly wiggle the mirrors in the detector to imitate the movement caused by a true gravity wave flowing through the detector. Hence, the only way to know if a signal really came from black holes smashing together millions of light years away is to finish an entire scientific study of the event and then ask the injection team to reveal whether the data was faked.
…….
When a potential gravitational wave signal was detected on the instrument in September of 2010, the entire LIGO team went to work. Through six months of late nights, they looked at every last detail and wrote up scientific reports of their finding. When the paper was complete, a mass vote was held to decide whether to submit that paper to the eager scientific journals of the world. The vote was a unanimous yes. Dramatically, the team responsible for injecting events dramatically opened an envelope to reveal whether the event was real or an injected fake.”
Seriously? So it is possible and it is practice to circumvent the entire filtering system? ! So. the mirror wiggling was done by the team with absolute knowledge of the computer models, how the mirrors would move if they encountered a real GW. Furthermore, the injection team did this at both sites. Now there are people involved, in between truth and fiction in every instance of an event. It is no wonder then that the fake pulse looked so much like the never-before-observed double black hole collision that came from a computer. Really … an envelope? Was it opened by a CPA firm at a podium? 🙂 No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
Pauol,
You have this completely backwards. The ‘injection’ procedure was instituted to check that the system works, and adds immensely to the reliability of the finding. Needless to say, no injection was performed for GW150914.
The gravitational waves were detected on Sept. 14, 2015 at 5:51 am Eastern Daylight Time , Washington state time would 3:51 am.
Question is what is manning at two control rooms at this hour, is it possible that an individual (or group of individuals) with knowledge and access to injection codes and procedures, close to retirement wishing to see their name published in the scientific press after years of fruitless search for the feeble gravitational wave. Einstein himself suspected that it is so weak that it may never be detected.
I have known of pre-retirement manipulations, to the company small but to the pension fund much larger detriment, in order to enhance individual’s retirement financial benefit.
Vukcevic,
I did a little search of “Scientists fake data” and the results were so numerous and too broad to compile. (WUWT had a few of the articles already) They ranged from fake HIV vaccines, and gene therapy data lots of fake climate data, fake PhD thesis data, on and on and on. The conclusion is simple, where there are human beings, there will be deception and the motives are as numerous as the stars in the sky.
So time will tell if there are actual gravity waves, chirps or pulses based on the preponderance of inscrutable data by objective or competitive laboratories. As I noted above, the case of the discovery accelerating expansion of the cosmos ie the fact that the data was so different from what was expected, thereby defeating the hypothesis that the data would confirm a slowing expansion, lended to its credibility.
With people clandestinely in between truth and fiction wrt GW gives me no comfort that the machine is perfect. Too much is at stake. Especially based on the original press release published in WUWT and its tone of the “litany of saints” and the subsequent chortling of Nobel Prizes. I suppose I could list the long and sad list of scientists who lied about their data….but I doubt it will influence those who have bought-in without thoughtful pause and temperance. Here is my infavorite lie… Michael Mann’s Nature Trick.
Faking Data for a Good Cause
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/01/ligos_fascinating_trial_by_fake_data.html
“A thousand or so scientists work on LIGO. Out of this group a handful are chosen for a special mission: the injection team. They are allowed to manipulate the raw data from the LIGO instruments. They may choose to hide fake detection signals in that data without telling anyone else. The rest of the project operates entirely in the dark. Unaware, the whole collaboration may find the signal and believe that they are on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that will earn them a Nobel Prize. They may also realize that the detection is a fake or else fail to catch it at all.” —> Why actually it was done?
“The fake is introduced in a particularly smart way: the injection team is allowed to directly wiggle the mirrors in the detector to imitate the movement caused by a true gravity wave flowing through the detector. Hence, the only way to know if a signal really came from black holes smashing together millions of light years away is to finish an entire scientific study of the event and then ask the injection team to reveal whether the data was faked.” —-> The fake was done on analog level through actuators moving mirrors. Thus virtually undetectable if there was no record of commands sent to actuators preserved. Keep in mind they know how “true” gravity wave looks like. After all they have GRT models, right?
“When a potential gravitational wave signal was detected on the instrument in September of 2010, the entire LIGO team went to work. Through six months of late nights, they looked at every last detail and wrote up scientific reports of their finding. When the paper was complete, a mass vote was held to decide whether to submit that paper to the eager scientific journals of the world. The vote was a unanimous yes. Dramatically, the team responsible for injecting events dramatically opened an envelope to reveal whether the event was real or an injected fake.” —->They were ready to publish! The whole team!
Can we be certain that 2015 discovery was not fake data injection? Was the team under pressure? They discovery came 5 months after $200 million upgrade of the detection system. Could they make available the paper written in 2011 based on 2010 fake injection. How much the “true” gravity waves measured in 2010 differ from the true gravity waves measured in 2015?
“How much the “true” gravity waves measured in 2010 differ from the true gravity waves measured in 2015” THAT in my opinion is the true question isn’t it. From what I have seen, and it is not much, the model and the result are very similar.
Maybe the underlying story here is that gravity pulses of sufficient magnitude to reach earth all look exactly alike and look exactly like the computer models and exactly like the injected signal.
“Can we be certain that 2015 discovery was not fake data injection?”
Apparently the reason the entire LIGO collaboration is certain GW150914 was not the result of a blind injection is because they had only just begun to collect data and the blind injection software had not yet been properly set up for Engineering Run 8.
G,
So they only know that the blind injection did not happen because of the absence of software update?
I think a disciplined scientific team needs a bit better control than that. Certainty of a scientific discovery, a big one, is dependent on the absence of something that is otherwise done routinely? So if something is not done, it is not documented as not done. So there is no evidence that it was done or not done, therefore there are gravity waves that look just like the injected signal? That is twisted logic. I am waiting for a competitive lab to objectively replicate the results, as all good scientists ought.
How about a “Practical Joke”?
According to Richard Muller, Prof Physics, UCBerkeley, author of “Now-Physics of Time” (2016)…
The possibility that it was a practical joke was taken seriously by the LIGO team. I’ve been told that they worried that someone was playing a trick, and had through access or hacking artificially inserted this event on both systems.
One reason for their concern was undoubtedly that the observed event appeared to be far more distant and far more intense and therefore far more exciting than anyone had anticipated.
After careful study, they concluded that even a very good practical joker could not have pulled it off.
There is an interesting historical example that is similar in nature. When Carl Anderson discovered the first positron (an anti-electron, the first form of antimatter ever observed), he was concerned that someone had inserted a mirror into his apparatus that would make an ordinary electron appear to be a positron. Here is an excerpt from my new book, Now — The Physics of Time:
“My mentor Luis Alvarez knew Anderson and greatly admired his work. He told me about one of Anderson’s concerns that I don’t think has been previously reported. The
1930s were an era when the practical joke was in high fashion among college students.
Alvarez himself was proud of some pretty clever tricks he had pulled on other
physicists, particularly on arrogant professors. So Anderson, armed with his
first photo of an anti-electron, worried that someone had played a trick on
him. All a jokester had to do was insert an extra mirror in front of Anderson’s
automated camera, and an electron would have appeared to curve the opposite
way. So, he carefully reexamined the photo and compared it with the apparatus,
but he concluded that the photo was indeed legitimate. He published, and
history was made.”
Anderson was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discovery.
How about a “Practical Joke”?
How about a triumph for science? as it assuredly is.
No fake injection, no practical joke. Perhaps we should be somewhat grateful to eliminate the possibility of blind injection, no doubt it saved them some time, and it saves us the speculation.
From what I have read, there may be good reason why the gravitational wave detected and the predicted waveform look so similar: robust modeling. Researchers from several countries contributed to advancing the BBH models from the more ‘simple’ signals to what was needed to accurately describe binary black hole mergers.
With their attention to detail, they seemed to have ruled out any other reasonable explanation. But I’m always open to suggestions. Personally, while awaiting further data, I’ll remain cautiously optimistic and lean towards the likelihood that decades of hard work, ~1000 collaborators, and some rather inspired engineering, has resulted in the direct experimental observation of gravitational waves.
And so it begins. Get out the Popcorn! Podcast from Hilton Ratcliffe “The Dissident Astronomer”
Love the analogy Dr Ratcliffe produces, because it makes things clear to the Hoi-Polloi: – Measure the distance between Sol and the nearest star. Say 40 million million kilometers. Now, create an incredibly accurate measuring device that will determine when this distance has varied by the width of a human hair.
LA Time Feb 26th..
quote:
The LIGO researchers even worried that a member of their own team had faked it.
“They decided it would have to be somebody who really understood the instrument well enough and the data well enough,” Harrison said. “And they found all such people and interviewed them and determined that in fact nobody had any motivation to do this. So they thought of everything to really vet that this was real.”
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-gravitational-waves-ligo-history-20160222-story.html
“nobody had any motivation to do this”… sure a Nobel Prize and a big pay check wouldn’t be a motive at all. People kill for less than that.
http://plasma.pics/questionable-waves/
And you are taken in by the “Electric Universe theory”. Sad.