A Second LIGO Gravitational Wave Observation?
GW150914: First results from the search for binary black hole coalescence with Advanced LIGO, The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration
“In addition to possible gravitational-wave signals, the detector strain contains a stationary noise background that primarily arises from photon shot noise at high frequencies and seismic noise at low frequencies.”
“its false alarm probability is not sufficiently low to confidently claim this candidate event as a signal. Detailed waveform analysis of this candidate event indicates that it is also a binary black hole merger with source frame masses 23+18 M⊙ and 13+4 M⊙, if it is of astrophysical origin.”
I would expect the LIGO project to lead with its best ( = lowest noise, most confident) candidate first in announcing the original discovery of gravity waves. For an annoucement of that magnitude, the last thing they’d want is a messy public squabble over detection limits, noise, and reduction algorithms.
However, if LIGO works at all — and clearly it does — there should be a fairly lengthy list of additional candidate signals or detection events, each with some degree of probability. How far down this list you publicize is a judgement call.
But the great thing about Nature is that it should keep on providing detections, so all we have to do is just be a little patient and we’ll have plenty of data to chew on.
My main point of curiosity lies in connecting these detections to various kinds of astrophysical events detectable through the electromagnetic spectrum because that will help complete the picture of the universe at work.
As always on occasions like this, I remind people to revisit Martin Harwit’s 1981 book Cosmic Discovery for some perspective on the bounds of knowledge, and an intriguing estimate of how many more kinds of astrophysical things there are to discover.
Similarly Gleiser’s “The Island of Knowledge”.
And reiterating one of my favorite themes: our knowledge of the Universe we inhabit is laughably shallow. The disparate nature of baryonic and so-called non-baryonic matter appears, at first blush to loom large, and yet both together may or may not characterize the place we find ourselves calling home.
There are some thinkers out there attempting to grasp the “Big Picture”. Brian Greene is one; whether or not there are infinite universes, as he describes in a recent (and challenging, at least imaginatively) book is the actual case, he is at least attempting to see a bigger picture.
And we need it. There have been no serious improvements in cosmological understanding in decades. A generation of young physicists is chasing strings, which appear for now to be the only serious direction of modern cosmology.
And I do so admire cosmologists as they attempt to grok the deepest and most fundamental issues. It is truly the “Sweet Science”, with apologies where they belong.
Meanwhile, back to my own laughable efforts documenting the use of tropical plants. Now THAT is a trivial pursuit 🙂