Taxpayers Duped by Einstein - LIGO still peddling LIES*

[davesmith_au]

August 22, 2009 ~ Dave Smith

Since Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 with his general theory of relativity, scientists have been devising ways of detecting them, but without any success despite throwing huge buckets of money into the search. ... [More...]

[Osmosis]

That's ok Dave, as soon as CERN gets their superconducting money pit running again, they will surely find more nothing!

[StevenJay]

I think that this still takes the prize for the the clearest most accurate likeness of a true-in-every-sense-of-the-word black hole yet produced. . .
in visible light only, no less!

[Influx]

... LIGO is now producing scientific results. The nondetection of a signal from GRB070201 ...

The analysis revealed no signs of gravitational waves ...


Are you @#$%@#$ me? If you look up insanity in a dictionary you will find that quote as a definition!

I mean, that's like saying, if I invest a million in the stock market and loose all the money, that that is a good thing!

[davesmith_au]

Are you @#$%@#$ me? If you look up insanity in a dictionary you will find that quote as a definition!

That's one of the reasons I've now written three Thunderblogs on LIGO. The first time, I thought they could possibly get away with it. The second, stretching the friendship a bit. But the third time? Three strikes and you're out! That's why the title "Taxpayers Duped by Einstein". Maybe if enough people read it, they'll pass it on to those who they know who've invested/donated to this scam, and people will start asking the right questions.

"Advanced LIGO" is set to start in 2014. The funny thing is, it's not more 'sensitive' than the current LIGO, it will just look at a larger 'volume of the universe'. Beats me how they're getting their funding still, and beats me why people aren't jumping up and down about it.

As an aside, their very choice of terminology reveals their smugness. The word "stochastic" (the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background, the thing they're looking for) means conjectural, random, pertaining to chance!

As a friend and colleague of opined after reading the draft for the Tblog:

God I hate smart ass, hypocritical, swindlers. Especially when they drink so well at the public trough.

I couldn't have put it any better myself.

Cheers, Dave.

[bdw000]

I for one really appreciate when you point out the ORWELLIAN nature of some of these "scientific" reports.

I find it hard to believe that is where we are now: 1984.

[Influx]

Instead of going back to the drawing board, LIGO is looking forward to 2014 when it will be able to look "10 times further" into the universe with their device. To my way of thinking, 10 times zero is still zero, and the money would be better spent on something useful.

Why, don't their theories apply to the whole universe? What is good for the deep space should be good for all space. Or are their theories selective? Do they have to look beyond our galaxy to try to validate their theatricals? I mean. I thought the milky ways black hole was churning out massive amounts of gravity waves!?

[mharratsc]

Well said, Dave

This experiment in particular illustrates in very fine detail the problem that I feel has plagued Astronomy for decades:

We have a Theory searching for an observation.

NASA and their contemporaries should be freaking ashamed by this! They can't get enough money to make a decent shuttle replacement, but they're not going out of their way to tell the ol USA to stop s**t-canning money into projects like this?!

Bah!

Mike H.

[longcircuit]

Read all about null findings here.
An excerpt (emphasis mine):

Null findings enable true scientists to know they’re looking in the wrong direction and that it’s time to go back to the drawing board and develop a different hypothesis. They also enable us to stop needlessly worrying about something that doesn’t matter. Null results are most vital to the progress of science and are the source of Albert Einstein’s famous saying: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

In fact, a big earmark of junk science and pseudoscience — or science being misused to sell us something or advance a special interest — is continuing to test and retest a belief long after it’s been disproven in well-designed studies. Building a body of research can lead unsuspecting consumers to believe that there’s a body of evidence in support of a belief. All studies are not created equal and the weight of the evidence does not come by tallying up the number of studies on one side or another.

Need we say more? I doubt it.

longcircuit

[MGmirkin]

I mean, that's like saying, if I invest a million in the stock market and loose all the money, that that is a good thing!

Well, sure, it taught you that the stock market sucks [your money]... And that your theory backing investing a million bucks was imperfect and should probably be abandoned.

I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. Your experiment receive a null ROI, thus setting an upper limit on how much money you can make with that particular scheme. (Around $0.00.)

There, did that sounds more science-y?

Can I get some grant money to study this investing theory more closely? Say $10,000,000 (I'll investigate whether funneling MORE money into the stock market improves one's chances of striking it rich)? But don't worry, I'll keep a million in reserve under my mattress...

Best,
~Michael Gmirkin

[Brigit Bara]

LIGO may not detect any gravitational waves, but at least it causes some thunderblogs in Oz!

[Reality Check]

The Hulse-Taylor observations gave strong indirect evidence for gravitational waves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1913%2B16).

The LIGO (and other experiments) are designed to directly measure gravitational waves. This means that they have to be very sensitive to detect the weak effects of gravitational waves and also that there has to be a source for them. Null results are good science in that they tell us about the possible sources of gravitational waves, i.e. that they are as not as energetic or common as we thought.

This is from the LIGO blog (http://ligonews.blogspot.com/)

LIGO Listens for Gravitational Echoes of the Birth of the Universe
An investigation by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration has significantly advanced our understanding of the early evolution of the universe.
Analysis of data taken over a two-year period, from 2005 to 2007, has set the most stringent limits yet on the amount of gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang in the gravitational wave frequency band where LIGO can observe. In doing so, the gravitational-wave scientists have put new constraints on the details of how the universe looked in its earliest moments.

[davesmith_au]

The Hulse-Taylor observations gave strong indirect evidence for gravitational waves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1913%2B16).

This is hardly what I would call stong evidence, more a correlation between two hyotheses. One which postulates the existence of neutron stars, the other which infers the existence of gravitaional waves, for which we have no observations yet.

The LIGO (and other experiments) are designed to directly measure gravitational waves. This means that they have to be very sensitive to detect the weak effects of gravitational waves and also that there has to be a source for them.

The key to my objections is the word "designed". Millions were spent on this in the hope of finding gravitational waves. It was designed to find them. It wasn't designed to constrain the "model". I'm sure if the original proposal for LIGO involved the possibility of it being under-designed, it would never have got off the ground. The upgrade is not in fact even making the thing more sensitive, it is expanding the volume of the universe in which it is looking, by a factor of 10, or so it is said. The financiers of this project are throwing good money after bad, and should have their heads examined, IMHO.

Null results are good science in that they tell us about the possible sources of gravitational waves, i.e. that they are as not as energetic or common as we thought.

OR, they tell us that we found NONE, so maybe they don't exist?

This is from the LIGO blog (http://ligonews.blogspot.com/)
<snip>

This is nothing but spin, trying to save face for a failed theory. If you are willing to believe it, then I have some real estate in Queensland which may interest you...

Cheers, Dave.

[StevenO]

The LIGO (and other experiments) are designed to directly measure gravitational waves. This means that they have to be very sensitive to detect the weak effects of gravitational waves and also that there has to be a source for them. Null results are good science in that they tell us about the possible sources of gravitational waves, i.e. that they are as not as energetic or common as we thought.

A physical null result means "no observable". That supports any implication. The theory that "the waves were not observed because unicorns ate them "would be perfectly true.

Working with zero values is the main reason that physical theory is messed up beyond repair.

[Peron]

... LIGO is now producing scientific results. The nondetection of a signal from GRB070201 ...

The analysis revealed no signs of gravitational waves ...


Are you @#$%@#$ me? If you look up insanity in a dictionary you will find that quote as a definition!

I mean, that's like saying, if I invest a million in the stock market and loose all the money, that that is a good thing!

"Having achieved its design goals two years ago, LIGO is now producing significant scientific results. The nondetection of a signal from GRB070201 is an important step toward a very productive synergy between gravitational-wave and other astronomical communities that will contribute to our understanding of the most energetic events in the cosmos."

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13084

GRB 070201 was a bright, short-duration, hard-spectrum gamma-ray burst detected by the Interplanetary Network. Its error quadrilateral, which has an area of 0.124 deg2, intersects some prominent spiral arms of the nearby M31 (Andromeda) galaxy.Given the properties of this GRB, along with the fact that LIGO data argue against a compact binary merger origin in M31, it is an excellent candidate to have been an extragalactic soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) giant flare, with an energy of 1.4×1045 ergs

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ...681.1464O