LIGO COURTROOM DRAMA: Trial Part 11

neutron star merger, ligo hanford, ligo livingston, ligo virgo, ligo kagra, ligo india, france cordova nsf, nsf ligo, ligo science collaboration, lsc collaboration, david reitze ligo, david shoemaker ligo, laura cadonati ligo, physical review letters

physical review letters, neutron star merger, ligo hanford, ligo livingston, ligo virgo, ligo kagra, ligo india, france cordova nsf, nsf ligo, ligo science collaboration, lsc collaboration, david reitze ligo, david shoemaker ligo, laura cadonati ligo

TRIAL PART 11

ON THE WITNESS STAND: Professor Rana X. Adhikari (for the Defendants)

VINO MOSCATO (Attorney for the Defendants): Good Morning, Professor Adhikari. It is indeed a pleasure to have the symbolic face of LIGO’s cadre of young geniuses to testify in this court. I am sure the jury would love to hear from you on the noble path of knowledge of the Universe LIGO has embarked upon. Would you tell us a little about yourself?

RANA X. ADHIKARI: I am a professor of physics at Caltech and a LIGO researcher.

MOSCATO: And a very young professor at that! Let me add for the jury that Professor Adhikari is one of the famed young bucks of the LIGO Science Collaboration, representing the new hope for physics in this millennium. He also happens to come from a Nobel pedigree – he was a doctoral student of LIGO Nobel Laureate Rainer Weiss. He is the instrument genius student of his instrument genius guru. His scientific authority in matters LIGO is unassailable. Now, Professor Adhikari, tell us briefly your position on the veracity of the LIGO discovery of neutron star merger just reported.

ADHIKARI: It is a most perfect scientific discovery with copious confirmations. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind.

MOSCATO: Thank you for enlightening the jury with that comment. Do you, with your full scientific authority, reject the Plaintiffs’ claim that the LIGO discoveries are fraudulent?

ADHIKARI: I do.

MOSCATO: And Professor Adhikari, you have been particularly involved in educating the masses on the beauty of the LIGO instrument, with your personal ‘like hey’ flair. You have explained how LIGO indeed can measure incredibly small movements, movements to a scale far smaller than the molecular-scale surface roughness of a mirror and the thermal vibrations of molecules. Some have tried to use this point to cast doubt on LIGO. What would you say to the public on this subject?

ADHIKARI: We are very careful scientists, and we know how to do our job.

MOSCATO: Excellent. I think that puts paid to all the criticisms from all the amateurs who are gunning for LIGO in the shady world of the Internet. I am sure the world citizenry will have the right instinct to believe you before they will believe those characters. Thank you, Professor Adhikari. Your witness, Ms. Veritas

ASSUMPTA VERITAS (Attorney for the Plaintiffs): Professor Adhikari, counsel for the defendants has certainly given us compelling grounds to submit to your authority on LIGO. Let me just cover a couple of points here for the jury. Is it true that you have been a leading force in planning to install a LIGO station in your old country India?

ADHIKARI: Yes.

VERITAS: And is it true that you said that the India LIGO has the advantage of being able to avoid the mistakes of the US LIGO? That you would redesign India LIGO?

ADHIKARI: Yes, but that has nothing to do with the correctness of the LIGO discoveries thus far.

VERITAS: Now, Professor Adhikari, Dr. De here has said many times that when there is something obviously wrong with an observing instrument, it is totally useless to discuss any results from it – no matter how impressive, no many times confirmed etc. Do you agree with that position?

ADHIKARI: That’s truism.

VERITAS: Very good. So we will proceed on that note and talk about the LIGO instrument. Then we will come back to the neutron star merger issue. Now, the citizens of the world have been constantly regaled with the fact that LIGO is so sensitive an instrument that it can sense a car driving by a mile away, waves lapping on the shores of the far ocean, a LIGO scientist pedaling his bicycle nearby …and so on. Are these stories correct?

ADHIKARI: Yes, LIGO is indeed that sensitive.

VERITAS: Is the point of this public education that if LIGO can astoundingly sense such things, it can also pick up gravitational waves from billions of light years away?

ADHIKARI: Yes.

VERITAS: Professor Adhikari, does LIGO pick up all these disturbances we have just spoken of in the same way – that is by the same instrumental mechanism – as it picks up gravitational waves?

ADHIKARI: Well … er… no. These disturbances are picked up because things go haywire inside LIGO in random ways. A mirror may move, a laser beam may go out of alignment, etc. But a gravitational wave causes LIGO to respond in a very specific and very predictable way.

VERITAS: Then LIGO picking up those disturbances says absolutely nothing about the LIGO sensitivity, does it? It is in fact a completely bogus story that has been spread around the world.

ADHIKARI: We are using a science-popularizing technique. We were not trying to be pedantic here with the general public.

VERITAS: I see. OK, for the sake of clarity, let us say the disturbances we have just spoken of that cause LIGO to go haywire in random ways are recorded by LIGO in Class A Operation which involves misalignment of the laser link, a mirror tilting off-axis etc. And the gravitational wave is picked up by Class B Operation which involves a perfectly aligned laser link and systematic movement of the mirrors, along their axes only – without any rotational or sideways motion. Is this an acceptable framework for discussion?

ADHIKARI Yes.

VERITAS: Now, in this scheme, how would geomagnetic disturbances be picked up?

ADHIKARI: They would be picked up in Class A Operation.

VERITAS: So it is only gravitational wave – and nothing else – that concerns the Class B Operation?

ADHIKAR: Yes.

VERITAS: Professor Adhikari, what is Class B Operation?

ADHIKARI: It is a very specific mode of actuation of LIGO. The two mirrors move forward and backward along their axes; and they move in concert, even though there is no mechanical or electromagnetic linkage between them. They have in fact been hung to move independently of each other. So these mirrors are in a kind of invisible entanglement – somewhat like quantum entanglement. When one mirror moves towards the apex of LIGO – the corner of the LIGO ell, the other moves away from that point. In this way the two mirrors move in lockstep. And the amplitude by which a mirror moves under the influence of a gravitational wave is on a scale of one ten-thousandth of a proton diameter.

VERITAS: So LIGO is always operating in Class A mode. Only when a gravitational wave is incident, the Class B mode comes into play. Is this correct?

ADHIKARI: Yes. In that case we have both Class A and Class B Operations occurring simultaneously.

VERITAS: So when you detect a gravitational wave, what is the experimental evidence that Class B Operation has been actuated? What is the evidence that the mirrors are entangled as though through some mysterious, invisible bond? What is the evidence that the mirror displacement is near one ten-thousandth of a proton diameter – a quantum-scale distance?

ADHIKARI: We do not monitor these effects directly. We cannot. If the LIGO readout wiggle matches our model of black hole merger wiggle – after the removal of noise of course – then that fact in itself proves that Class B operation has taken place.

VERITAS: So the matching of the two wiggles confirms in one fell swoop four independent theoretical conjectures: passage of gravitational wave; black hole merger; entanglement of mirrors; and the movement amplitude on a quantum scale. One endpoint agreement confirms four highly esoteric theoretical conjectures. Is that correct?

ADHIKARI Yes.

VERITAS: And you do not see any logical problem with this?

ADHIKARI: No. The detailed agreement between two wiggles can confirm multiple conjectures. The scientific establishment and the Nobel Prize givers do not have any problems with this.

VERITAS: And is this agreement pristine in the sense that you remove the noise and out pops a wiggle that then matches one of your theory wiggles?

ADHIKARI: Actually this is a guided agreement in the sense that we window our theory templates through the data string and look for matches.

VERITAS: And you still think this agreement satisfactory confirms – jointly and singly – all four independent conjectures, none of which has any other support in the LIGO operation?

ADHIKARI: Yes.

VERITAS: Is it correct then to say that the LIGO instrument is validated by the discovery it makes, and only by the discovery it makes?

ADHIKARI: In a way.

VERITAS: And you do not see any logical problem with this scientific procedure?

ADHIKARI: No. It is not possible to test LIGO on any kind of standardized source. We do not have any other options.

VERITAS: Now, Professor Adhikari, the noise from Class A Operation and the signal from Class B Operation – when they appear together in the LIGO readout, they are superimposed on each other in the sense that you can separate one from the other. Is that correct?

ADHIKARI: Yes, but the separating is a complex digital procedure.

VERITAS: I want to clarify my question. The wiggle that you obtain after separating from the noise is the same wiggle that would appear in the readout if there were no noise at all?

ADHIKARI: Yes.

VERITAS: And that is the wiggle that was incident on LIGO and is to be matched to the black hole merger model wiggle?

ADHIKARI: Yes. But the matching is more or less already done because we have used the theory wiggle template to match and extract out the signal wiggle.

VERITAS: So is it correct to say that Class A and Class B Operations are independent of each other?

ADHIKARI: Yes.

VERITAS: Professor Adhikari, listen to me closely. This is very important. Consider an instant of time in which a gravitational wave is being recorded by LIGO. At that instant, the laser link is misaligned or a mirror is tilted due to the Class A Operation. So the LIGO instrument at that instant is in a changed configuration. And it is that changed LIGO that is registering the gravitational wave at that instant.

This means that Class A Operation not only adds noise but actually distorts the Class B signal. The noise and the signal are not additive. They become inextricable. This is no longer an issue of separating egg yolk from egg white. The egg is scrambled. Do you understand my point?

ADHIKARI: I am not sure. I think I am being trapped.

VERITAS: Professor Adhikari, this is a court of law and no one is trapping you. I am not schmoozing with you. I have asked you a question. Answer it please.

ADHIKARI: What you say sounds right but the real issue is if it is of any significance.

VERITAS: Do you know for a fact that this is not significant?

ADHIKARI: No.

VERITAS: Since noise is dominant in LIGO, common sense tells us that this effect is important. LIGO is an unconventional scientific instrument not because it is novel but because it is weird. But the bottom line is that LIGO readout contains signal and noise completely scrambled and cannot be separated. That is the LIGO weirdorama. Do you agree?

ADHIKARI: I cannot answer that question right off the bat. I would have to think about it.

VERITAS: Professor Adhikari, how long is your laser link that undergoes jitter – if we can use that term for misalignment etc. – to produce Class A noise?

ADHIKARI: It is 4 km on each side of the LIGO ell for the two US stations.

VERITAS: I will rephrase my question. How long is the effective laser link?

ADHIKARI: I am sorry. I spoke too soon. The effective link is 1200 km because of the light storage technique we use to accumulate measurements.

VERITAS: So the Class B signal undergoes 1200 km of link jitter that has been created by Class A Operation. Have you studied the importance of this instrumental signal distortion?

ADHIKARI: I have not. But someone else may have.

VERITAS: But it is clear that LIGO does not take into account the instrumental distortion of the Class B signal due to Class A Operation. Is that correct?

ADHIKARI: We have not addressed this in an explicit way.

VERITAS: And it is this instrument-distorted wiggle that you compare with theory to find perfect match. What does this match mean?

ADHIKARI: I cannot answer this question immediately.

VERITAS: OK, let us talk about the chirp that clinched the neutron star discovery. For the jury, chirp means an increase in the signal frequency with time. Now, according to the LIGO theory, this chirp is due to the LIGO mirrors oscillating mechanically with the same increasing frequency in its Class B Operation. Is this correct?

ADHIKARI: Yes.

VERITAS: Now, for the light storage measurement technique, a 1200 km effective length can be shown to be good for measuring mirror vibration frequencies up to ~ 70 cycles per second. But in the neutron star merger case, your chirp happens in the 25 ~ 300 cycles per second range and perhaps higher. What is your response?

ADHIKARI: We get that frequency range from digital analysis of our readout.

VERITAS: And that analysis can provide more information than what the instrument has gathered?

ADHIKARI: It is complicated.

VERITAS: Furthermore, whatever chirp you can find correctly is not relevant since gravitational wave signal – if it exists – is not extricable from the noise. The chirp cannot be ascribed to the wave, even if it was registered by LIGO.

But this is all superfluous. LIGO cannot detect gravitational wave because it cannot demonstrate quantum theory-like mirror entanglement or quantum-scale macroscopic mirror movement. There is neither any direct nor any any indirect evidence of any kind that these fanciful conjectures materialize in LIGO.

ADHIKARI: That’s a preposterous statement. The whole scientific community has accepted our result as a spectacular discovery. You are nitpicking. You are making too much of some trivia.

VERITAS: The trivia is simply that your neutron star merger diagrams are not “on the sky”. They are some type of instrumental-digital artifact, triggered by some terrestrial disturbance. You needed 100 seconds worth of action from that disturbance to bridge it to the gamma ray burst time, and there the artifact has served well.

ADHIKARI: The journal Physical Review Letters has certified that our results are on the sky.

VERITAS: Do you agree with the fatal LIGO instrument faults I have described?

ADHIKARI: I don’t know. I mean you … how can someone like you argue with the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee which has certified LIGO?

VERITAS: Mr. Adhikari, as I told you, this is a court of law. The Nobel Prize has no special standing here. Only facts have. Your Honor, I have no further questions for this witness.

JUDGE: Redirect, Mr. Moscato?

MOSCATO: Yes, Your Honor. Professor Adhikari, you do not admit that there is anything the matter with the LIGO discoveries, do you?

ADHIKARI: No, I do not.

MOSCATO: No further questions.

JUDGE: The witness is excused.

Advertisements

LIGO: Neutron Star merger a total scam

Folks, there is no question that an astronomical event happened and multiple electromagnetic observatories observed this. There is no question that the role of LIGO in this is a total scam.

What I will do is make this the subject of the courtroom drama series. In the the next post, Attorney Assumpta Veritas will explain everything to you in clear terms. So hang in there!

LIGO COURTROOM DRAMA: Trial Part 10

TRIAL PART 10

ON THE WITNESS STAND: Professor Karsten Danzmann (for the Defendants)

VINO MOSCATO (Attorney for the Defendants): Greetings, Professor Danzmann. You are the Director of the Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, and a major player in LIGO. One of the scientific areas you are concerned with is calibration of the LIGO instrument. My first question to you is this: Is the LIGO instrument calibrated?

KARSTEN DANZMANN: It is.

MOSCATO: And has this calibration been documented?

DANZMANN: It has been extensively documented. It involves painstaking research involving controlled moving of the LIGO mirrors, and noting the LIGO instrument readout corresponding to this mirror movement. This is followed by extensive scientific and technical analysis.

MOSCATO: Is this the kind of technical complexity you were referring to when you told one Wolfgang Engelhardt that LIGO calibration is too complicated to understand?

DANZMANN: Yes. He expected simple or simplistic answers, but they are not often available at the cutting edge of scientific instrumentation.

MOSCATO: Very fine! So you did not intend any slight to Engelhardt?

DANZMANN: Of course not.

MOSCATO: Is the LIGO calibration science Engelhardt wanted to know about all recorded in the public domain? I mean, nothing he would need to understand the calibration procedure has been classified or kept from the public?

DANZMANN: Everything necessary to understand LIGO calibration is in the public domain. Someone capable of understanding this will see that LIGO is a properly calibrated instrument.

MOSCATO: Indeed! It is quite obvious that the Nobel Prize deliberation committee has understood and accepted as valid the calibration. And that is the final imprimatur on the calibration procedure – a kind of certificate of operability. Wouldn’t you say?

DANZMANN: I think it is self-evident.

MOSCATO: Thank you, Professor Danzmann. Your Witness, Ms. Veritas.

ASSUMPTA VERITAS (Attorney for the Plaintiffs): Professor Danzmann, let us stipulate that LIGO calibration is a highly complex and highly specialized area of science and technology. Let us leave that aside altogether. Could you, in very simple terms, describe for the jury what calibration is?

DANZMANN: Certainly. I will be happy to. Consider a situation familiar to all of us. You have been to the doctor’s office and they put you on that stand which measures your height. They lower the sliding angle until it touches your head, and read off the height from the scale on the stand there. Now, how was that scale marked by the manufacturer of the instrument? What they did is build the stand that is now blank – without any markings. So they take an eight-foot length standard, say. This standard has been measured elsewhere to be exactly eight feet long. The manufacturer places this on his stand and makes a mark for eight foot length. Now he can put the standard away and subdivide that length and place marks every foot, every inch, every half-inch etc. This is calibration.

VERITAS: Thank you. And now, staying with your medical analogy, suppose a surgeon has taken out a group of gallstones and needs to measure them. How would he do that?

DANZMANN: I don’t know what they actually use, but a pair of Vernier calipers would do very well. It can measure sizes in the millimeter range and below.

VERITAS: What length standard would be used in calibrating that instrument? Would the eight-foot standard do?

DANZMANN: No. Here they have to use millimeter length standard.

VERITAS: Good. Now back to LIGO. Is it true that in the actual situation of detecting a gravitational wave, the LIGO mirror moves to, or is displaced by, the extent of one ten-thousandth of a proton diameter?

DANZMANN: Yes.

VERITAS: And your highly complex LIGO calibration procedure – does it displace the mirror in this range?

DANZMANN: No. We move the mirror by a distance that is orders of magnitude larger.

VERITAS: So, Professor Danzmann, by what you have explained yourself with regard to length standards, the LIGO instrument was never calibrated for measuring gravitational wave. Do you agree?

DANZMANN: No. You have oversimplified the issue.

VERITAS: What is there to oversimplify? Either LIGO was calibrated using a displacement standard near ten-thousandth of a proton diameter or it was calibrated using a displacement standard orders of magnitude larger. Which one is it?

DANZMANN: It is the larger, but it works for the smaller case also. How it works is much too complicated to describe here.

VERITAS: Have you described the justification for this unheard-of orders-of-magnitude extrapolation in any public document?

DANZMANN: Well, not directly.

VERITAS: Are you saying that this is so complex that trained scientists like Professor Engelhardt who worked at a Max Planck Institute or Dr. De who holds measurement and instrumentation patents cannot understand? Is this the “You do not understand” response for which LIGO has become so famous?

DANZMANN: Well, clearly the Nobel evaluators could understand; and clearly the entire physics establishment could understand. So we are talking about a couple of people disagreeing with a total scientific consensus.

VERITAS: So now we are moving to the Democracy argument. Is that the ultimate arbiter of science?

DANZMANN: Scientific consensus has always been the way science progresses.

VERITAS: For the calibration that you did do, have you presented side-by-side comparison of the mirror displacement trace vs your instrument readout trace. If not, why not?

DANZMANN: We have not. And the answer is too complicated.

VERITAS: Professor Danzmann, I submit to you that – all other faults aside – LIGO was never calibrated for detection of gravitational wave. What calibration you have done is faulty. I submit to you that Professor Engelhardt and Dr. De are the only people on record as having actually understood the LIGO calibration science. I submit to you that all along you have been trying to snow the critics with this complication argument. I submit to you that your vaunted Nobel certification of your calibration procedure is not worth the piece of paper it is written on.

DANZMANN: You are entitled to your views.

VERITAS: Your Honor, I have no further questions.

JUDGE: Any redirect, Mr. Moscato?

MOSCATO: Yes, Your Honor. Professor Danzmann, is it correct that you are a highly decorated scientist, adorned with such distinctions as the Korber Foundation Prize and the Lower Saxony Prize?

DANZMANN: I was given those prizes.

MOSCATO: No further questions, You Honor.

JUDGE: The witness is excused.

LIGO COURTROOM DRAMA: Trial Part 8

TRIAL PART 8

ON THE WITNESS STAND: Rainer Weiss (for the Defendants)

VINO MOSCATO (Attorney for the Defendants): Professor Weiss, it is an honor to have you here. Congratulations on your Nobel Prize. Now, we know that you do not read stuff Dr. De puts out on the Internet or his book on LIGO. But at my request, you read that book before coming here. What is your reaction?

RAINER WEISS: I believe he cannot understand that LIGO is a novel instrument which cannot be judged by conventional instrumentation concepts.

MOSCATO: So is his entire book dismissible?

WEISS: I believe so.

MOSCATO: Is it correct to conclude that Dr. De is wallowing in his own misunderstandings in his book?

WEISS: I think that’s right.

MOSCATO: Thank you, Professor Weiss. I will not burden you further with this sort of thing. Your witness, Ms. Veritas.

ASSUMPTA VERITAS (Attorney for the Plainfiffs): Good Morning, Professor Weiss. Let’s get right down to it. Does the LIGO instrument have an input signal and an output signal, and if so, what are they? Also, for the ease of understanding, let us use the term wiggle for signal.

WEISS: Yes, there is an input wiggle and there is an output wiggle. The input wiggle would be a time trace of a number that is the linear size of something that is being sequentially contracted and expanded by the passage of a gravitational wave. The output wiggle would be this same wiggle as reported by the LIGO measuring system.

VERITAS: And the two wiggles are different?

WEISS: Yes.

VERITAS: So, is Dr. De correct in describing LIGO as a two-port instrument with an input port and an output port?

WEISS: We don’t look at it this way, but that description is OK up to a point.

VERITAS: And is he correct in saying that the input wiggle and the output wiggle – which are different – are related by an Instrument Transfer Function which must be determined and reported for LIGO to be a valid scientific instrument?

WEISS: This is where his confusion begins. What we do with LIGO is take the output wiggle as reported by LIGO, remove the noise component from it, and what remains is the input wiggle. This process is our equivalent of the conventional Transfer Function. The Instrument Transfer Function procedure is not applicable to LIGO.

VERITAS: Thank you for that clear statement. And the stuff you remove as noise, where does it come from?

WEISS: There are very many sources of noise – seismic ground vibration, a truck passing by, waves lapping on shore, distant thunder, … , And then there are also many types of instrument-origined noise.

VERITAS: When you speak of noise here, anything that is not gravitational wave signal is noise. Is this correct?

WEISS: Yes.

VERITAS: Very good. So, let us make a list of all possible external noise sources and label them A through K, say. Then all instrument-origined noise L through P, say. And let Q be the gravitational wave signal. So when your computer takes out the noise part, does it subdivide the noise into all these categories A through P, and show the tabulated values for the categories?

WEISS: Of course not. Our sophisticated digital technique can distinguish between signal and noise, and remove all that it identifies as noise, namely, A through P taken as a consolidated lump. Only the signal Q then remains, and that is the input wiggle. This is what we compare with the theory wiggle for black hole merger.

VERITAS: But the instrument-origined noise L through P is different from external noise A through K. The latter is not dependent on LIGO, the former is. It is more likely than not that L-P is correlated with Q, the input signal. The “noise” L-P could be harmonics of Q, for example. If your algorithm has instruction to take out out L-P, would not it take out some of Q as well? Or wouldn’t it leave some of L-P with Q? You simply cannot lump together A-K and L-P for the purpose of extracting Q. It may be convenient for the computer, but it is wrong physics.

WEISS: Now we are getting into complicated areas.

VERITAS: Not at all. We have just clarified your misunderstanding. It is the components L through P that necessitate the Instrument Transfer Function, not A through K. You are mixing up and mishandling them, and you are doing so to your benefit. By bypassing the Transfer Function procedure, you have given yourself leeway to make up your custom discovery wiggles from the data. There is nothing about LIGO that cannot be described and analyzed in terms of conventional instrument concept. What is your response to that?

WEISS: As I said, this subject is too complicated.

VERITAS: OK, let’s move on. As Dr. De has pointed out in his book, there is no written evidence anywhere that you have taken into account the Earth’s static magnetic field on the LIGO instrument all these years. What do you have to say about that?

WEISS: This effect is being studied.

VERITAS: So are your discoveries valid even though you left out this effect?

WEISS: This effect cannot be so important as to invalidate our discoveries.

VERITAS: And then Dr. De has also pointed out that you take the hypothetical properties of gravitational wave as true and operative, to deduce the passage of gravitational wave. You assume that the mirror motions are invisibly entangled (because a gravitational wave is passing through) to prove that a gravitational wave has passed through. There is absolutely no experimental evidence of any kind that the mirror motions are in invisible entanglement. This is a pure flight of fancy that leads you to report a tangible discovery.

WEISS: As I said, this is too complicated.

VERITAS: Dr. De has also shown that LIGO is not a complete scientific instrument. I believe the expression he used is “it is not all there.” LIGO cannot detect gravitational waves even if they existed and traversed LIGO. That is because it is the invisible entanglement of the mirrors that LIGO must experimentally demonstrate to report the detection of the wave. And LIGO has no way to do this.

WEISS: We have detected gravitational wave – four times now.

VERITAS: So you say. Professor Weiss, who is wallowing in his own misunderstanding, you or Dr. De? And what about your 1000 colleagues?

MOSCATO: Objection, Your Honor. There is no cause for this kind of taunt.

JUDGE: Overruled. You started this, Mr. Moscato!

VERITAS: Your Honor, I have no further questions.

JUDGE: The witness is excused.

LIGO COURTROOM DRAMA: Trial Part 7

TRIAL PART 7

ON THE WITNESS STAND: France Cordova (for the Defendants)

VINO MOSCATO (Attorney for the Defendants): Dr. Cordova, would you please tell the court who you are and what your connection to LIGO is?

FRANCE CORDOVA: I am the Director of National Science Foundation which is an autonomous agency that funds scientific research. The agency has supported LIGO research to detect gravitational wave for decades. Through good times and bad, our support has remained unwavering.

MOSCATO: And what is the total amount NSF has invested in LIGO thus far?

CORDOVA: It is about a billion dollars.

MOSCATO: Was it worth it? If yes, would you tell the court why?

CORDOVA: It was worth every cent we spent. LIGO gave us the greatest scientific discovery ever made. An entire new field of astronmy – called gravitational wave astronomy – has opened up. It gives us a new window on the Universe. We today speak already of multi-messenger astronomy.

MOSCATO: That’s great, Dr. Cordova. And how sure are you that the discovery is solid?

CORDOVA: I am absolutely sure. I have said so repeatedly in public and I have promised our continued support.

MOSCATO: And just to cover all grounds, has your agency’s Inspector General received any complaints about LIGO?

CORDOVA: None that I am aware of. There is no cloud hanging over the LIGO discovery as far as the agency is concerned. It is one of the most vetted scientific results in history.

MOSCATO: Thank you, Dr. Cordova. Your witness, Ms. Veritas.

ASSUMPTA VERITAS (Attorney for the Plainfiffs): Good Afternoon, Dr. Cordova. You have given us a picture of LIGO within your agency that is one hundred percent worry-free and trouble-free. But that’s not quite the case, is it?

CORDOVA: I don’t know what you mean.

VERITAS: Well, your IG may not have received any complaints about LIGO. But did you?

CORDOVA: Well, actually, a referral to the White House about LIGO was forwarded to us. It had some concerns about LIGO.

VERITAS: Do you recall who made that referral?

CORDOVA: I believe it was Dr. De who is sitting here in the courtroom.

VERITAS: And what did you do about those concerns?

CORDOVA: We had actually supported – regardless of that complaint – a study of the role of geomagnetic disturbances on LIGO that was one of Dr. De’s concerns.

VERITAS: OK, just so the jury can follow this issue, geomagnetic disturbances are of earthly origin while gravitational waves come from the far reaches of the Universe. The issue is which one of these LIGO is looking at. Looking at gravitational wave would mean a discovery. Looking at geomagnetic disturbance would mean no discovery. Is this correct?

CORDOVA: Yes, this is correct.

VERITAS: So then, what did that study conclude?

CORDOVA: I believe the study concluded that geomagnetic disturbances could mimic gravitational waves with respect to their simultaneous observation at multiple stations as well as the frequency content of the signal observed. It recommended that every LIGO station have the dedicated means of monitoring geomagnetic disturbances at a high level of accuracy. This monitoring is done with devices called magnetometers.

VERITAS: I will now read portions from the above study: “Going forward, Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will have low noise magnetometers installed at each observatory site. It will be important to use the magnetometer data to identify coincident magnetic transient events, and veto those times…. Correlated
noise will be a real and legitimate concern for gravitational-wave searches using ground based detectors.”

In view of these findings, why aren’t the past discoveries suspect? If geomagnetic disturbances will be of such crucial importance in future, why were they not an issue in the past? Why aren’t the discoveries thus far suspect?

CORDOVA: We received assurances from the LIGO leaders that their discoveries thus far were shipshape.

VERITAS: Did it not occur to you that such assurances had to be false because no geomagnetic monitoring was available in the cases of the past discoveries?

CORDOVA: We took their word in implicit trust.

VERITAS: So you did not pursue this issue further?

CORDOVA: We had no reason to.

VERITAS: Would it have been within your authority to commission an independent engineering study of the LIGO instrument – independent of the LIGO organization? Such a study could be peformed, for example, by a high-tech consulting company likeThe Aerospace Corporation?

CORDOVA: It would have been within my authority, but that thought never ocurred to me.

VERITAS: Is this a failure of imagination?

CORDOVA: It is not usual for the agency to go outside the scientific establishment and order independent scientific investigations.

VERITAS: So – to summarize – you did receive a complaint about LIGO. You did conduct a study on it. The study gave categorical support to the complaint. But then you closed the matter based of assurances from LIGO and/or from LIGO proponents.

CORDOVA: We attended to the complaint. It had no merit. We moved on.

VERITAS: Who determined that it had no merit?

CORDOVA: The LIGO scientists did.

VERITAS: So you dismissed a complaint that is in scientific evidence as having substance, based on the recommendation of the very project against whom the complaint was made? And all this you did in a secret two-party dealing – NSF and LIGO?

CORDOVA: There is nothing secret about it. The study of geomagnetic disturbances was published.

VERITAS: Exactly where was it published?

CORDOVA: It was published in a special issue of the Journal of Classical and Quantum Gravity.

VERITAS: Is this even a remotely logical place to publish this study on the influence of geomagnetic disturbances on the LIGO instrument? Where do we get gravity here – classical or quantum?

CORDOVA: I cannot say why they decided to publish a paper in a particular journal. We do not micromanage the projects we fund.

VERITAS: Well, it seems to me that for various reasons the paper had to be published, but it was not desirable for it to become widely known. So it was buried in a journal where nobody would look for it.

MOSCATO: Objection, You Honor. Counsel is testifying.

JUDGE: Move on, Ms. Veritas.

VERITAS: Dr. Cordova, was the public informed of this highly significant geomagnetic study in any of the many LIGO public outreach forums where LIGO progress and LIGO developments were constantly being broadcast, bandied about and gloried upon?

CORDOVA: I don’t know the answer to that.

VERITAS: And after that study you still maintain that the discovery is one hundred percent solid?

CORDOVA: I certainly do.

VERITAS: Did it occur to you to inform the Nobel folks of this little-known but highly relevant study you conducted, a study that placed the LIGO discoveries in serious question?

CORDOVA: We do not get involved with the Nobel process.

VERITAS: Are you aware of two other independent studies – one from Japan and one from Russia – suggesting LIGO may have observed just geomagnetic disturbances? These studies were published even as LIGO was undergoing evaluation for the Nobel Prize.

CORDOVA: No. We are not researchers ourselves. We would not know of such studies unless LIGO or others inform us.

VERITAS: And now learning about those studies, you still maintain that the discovery is one hundred percent solid?

CORDOVA: Obviously I cannot answer that without having those studies you mention looked at, and receiving advice.

VERITAS: And who would be doing that looking and advising? LIGO? Would you be satisfied with more assurances from LIGO leaders?

CORDOVA: I suppose a completely independent report could be commissioned from outside the scientific establishment.

VERITAS: It would be a little late, wouldn’t it? The Nobel Prize has already been awarded and it is irrevocable.

CORDOVA: We are not responsible for what the Nobel people do.

VERITAS: I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honor.

JUDGE: The witness may step down.

LIGO COURTROOM DRAMA: Trial Part 5

(continued from previous post)

TRIAL PART 5

ON THE WITNESS STAND: Edward Witten (for the Defendants)

VINO MOSCATO (Attorney for the Defendants): Good Morning, Professor Witten! Your reputation precedes you. You have been described as the smartest man on the planet; as someone posssessing the mind of god; as a time traveler from future; as a peer to such physics greats as Lorentz. When you speak, the world listens. What is your opinion of the LIGO discovery?

EDWARD WITTEN: I have endorsed the discovery. As the Chair of the Award Committee for the Breakthrough Prize, I recommended the $3 million Prize for LIGO.

MOSCATO: Have you recommended LIGO for any other prizes?

WITTEN: Many such recommendations are done in confidence. So I cannot answer that question.

MOSCATO: OK, let me put the question in another way: Are there any doubts in your mind about the LIGO discovery being correct?

WITTEN: None whatsoever.

MOSCATO: Thank you, Professor Witten. You have spoken, and the jury has listened. Your witness, Ms. Veritas.

ASSUMPTA VERITAS (Attorney for the Plainfiffs): Good Morning, Professor Witten. Would you describe for the jury in very simple terms what LIGO is?

WITTEN: LIGO is a very advanced scientific instrument for detecting something called gravitational wave. It has been described as mankind’s highest achievement in measurement science.

VERITAS: Thank you. You used two descriptions: scientific instrument and measurement science. What is your background in scientific instrumentation?

WITTEN: I do not have any background in scientific instrumentation.

VERITAS: And what is your background in measurement science?

WITTEN: I do not have any background in measurement science.

VERITAS: So, on what basis do you certify that the LIGO discovery is correct beyond a shadow of doubt?

WITTEN: In such matters we scientists trust our colleagues to have done things right. The LIGO scientists have the highest competence. They have said they have observed gravitational waves, and I believe they have.

VERITAS: Trust. Belief. Are these the basis for evaluation of a scientific discovery?

WITTEN: You do not understand how science works.

VERITAS: OK, fine. But is it correct to say that you do not personally have the necessary expertise to certify anything about LIGO?

WITTEN: I am a String Theorist.

VERITAS: Answer my question please. Do you personally have the scientific qualification to certify LIGO? Yes or No?

WITTEN: No.

VERITAS: And all this business about mind of god and time traveling – do they have anything to do with the correctness of the LIGO discovery? Yes or No?

WITTEN: No.

VERITAS: I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honor.

ASHA SOLOMON (Judge): The witness is excused.

LIGO COURTROOM DRAMA: Introduction

Scientific fraud – especially fraud at the highest, most rarefied levels of physics – cannot be understood by public in general. The best they can do is listen to generalized expert opinions and decide who they can trust. However, it is usually the party at fault which controls what is communicated to the public. This is certainly the case with LIGO.

So I have long wondered how I can effectively explain the LIGO fraud to the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. How can the trusting public understand the hanky-panky that goes on in the backrooms of the inviolate temple of learning?

I have watched some courtroom drama on TV. And it has occurred to me that this can be a very effective vehicle to adopt here. The award of the Nobel Prize for this fraud has now prompted me to compose such a drama.

Starting with the next post, I will relate a courtroom drama series on LIGO. This is completely imaginary. Although I will use real names of real people (in public life and/or on public payroll), the statements I will have them making are not statements they ever made. But these statements will be consistent with the public persona they have presented in promoting and installing the LIGO fraud.

Now for the setting:

The LIGO Organization has been sued in the civil court by a taxpayer group that calls themselves The Guardians of Civilization. This group seeks to make LIGO regurgitate the public funds and to have a judge direct their criminal prosecution by the Government for science fraud and taxpayer fraud. Remember the following names:

Assumpta Veritas, Attorney for the Plaintiffs
Vino Moscato, Attorney for the Defendants
Asha Solomon, Judge

POST-NOBEL COMMENTS ON INDIA LIGO

I am not a citizen of India, and so that nation investing in fraud science is no skin off my nose. As a person of Indian origin, I tried to give the Indian scientific establishment some direction and inject some sense into them.

Now with the Nobel Prize, they have been fully empowered to proceed, and they are proceeding. Even more moneys than they originally asked for are being sought.

For me, the LIGO Nobel Prize changes absolutely nothing in my scientific position on LIGO. That position has been recorded for posterity. The LIGO instrument is a total piece of crap – good only for scrap metal.

And there will be no change in this position if there emerge reports of neutron star merger, with confirmatory electromagnetic signature. LIGO cannot detect gravitational wave any more than a dowsing rod can detect water.

So I will have nothing further to say on the subject of installation of LIGO in India.

THE DIABOLIC CON OF WEISS AND THORNE

Of the many expansive scientific lies upon which LIGO is built, perhaps the most effective one for them is that (they say in their website) LIGO is blind to electromagnetic (EM) signals. LIGO senses only mechanical vibrations.

It is in fact EM that LIGO sees most readily. Here is how it works: An EM disturbance is incident on LIGO steel tubes. Since the walls of the tube are thin, this disturbance penetrates through and hits the LIGO innards, in which electric currents are generated. However, there is the Earth’s static magnetic field. Therefore the innards are set in mechanical vibration (following that old motor principle). And such mechanical vibrations are precisely what LIGO is designed to detect.

It seems that the Ligonauts suffer from clinical amnesia about the Earth’s magnetic field, which is THE most crucial factor for their instrument.

Additionally, the km-scale LIGO tubes are especially efficient attractors of geomagnetic disturbances.

Thus, quite unintentionally, LIGO is a fine detector of geomagnetic disturbances, and nothing else.

All this I have explained in this blog within days after the first LIGO detection was announced. They are also in my book.

So you can see that simultaneous observation of a signal at two or three stations does not make a case for gravitational wave. Chirp, ringdown etc – if they are truly present in the data – are related to instrument response upon being actuated by a geomagnetic disturbance. Everything is terrestrial. There is no cause here to invoke extraterrestrial phenomena unless there is some pressing need to come up with grandiose discoveries.

One of the important conclusions that follows is that nothing the Ligonauts say, or explain should be believed. If anyone is interested in assessing anything about LIGO, they have to go completely outside the physics establishment, and ask some group that this establishment cannot “get to.” The establishment can no longer be trusted – not for scientific competence nor for honesty.

nobel prize, nobel prize 2017, nobel prize physics, nobel prize physics 2017, nobel foundation, royal swedish academy of sciences, kungliga vetenskapsakademien, kip thorne, kip thorne nobel prize, kip thorne caltech, kip thorne ligo, rainer weiss, rainer weiss nobel prize, rainer weiss mit, rainer weiss ligo, ligo india, ligo kagra, lsc collaboration, france cordova nsf, nsf ligo, national science foundation, national science board

nobel prize, nobel prize 2017, nobel prize physics, nobel prize physics 2017, nobel foundation, royal swedish academy of sciences, kungliga vetenskapsakademien, kip thorne, kip thorne nobel prize, kip thorne caltech, kip thorne ligo, rainer weiss, rainer weiss nobel prize, rainer weiss mit, rainer weiss ligo, ligo india, ligo kagra, lsc collaboration, france cordova nsf, nsf ligo, national science foundation, national science board

LEMME ‘SPLAIN LIGO TO THE SWEDES….

Folks, do you know that even as the LIGO Nobel Prize was announced, there was a very prominent and widely known position within the physics establishment that there was no discovery here? This position was held by some scientists at the University of Copenhagen.

Do you also know that there was a position communicated directly to the Nobel Committee that the LIGO instrument had no valid calibration? A scientific instrument without calibration is like a tape measure without any markings on it.

Both positions are correct, and they together establish without the slightest question that there was no discovery. No way no how.

Do you also know that the Nobel folks have repeatedly expressed the position that they like to wait many years after a discovery is reported to be sure that it can stand the test of time?

So why was this prize given in an unseemly hurry under these clear circumstances? And why isn’t anybody raising any issues about this most bizarre award in the entire history of the Nobel Prize?

The LIGO Nobel Prize was rammed through with total disregard for science or society or even the Nobel tradition. It is a dirty power play on the part of some very ugly people hellbent on prevailing against any dissent of any kind. They have some agenda and some timetable, and no one is going to stand in their way.They are not going to wait for anyone or anything.

But, lighten up. May be I can use a little humor to explain to the Swedes for once what it is that they have just anointed.

nobel prize physics, nobel prize physics 2017, nobel foundation, ligo hanford, ligo livingston, ligo virgo, ligo kagra, ligo india, france cordova nsf, kip thorne, rainer weiss

nobel prize physics, nobel prize physics 2017, nobel foundation, ligo hanford, ligo livingston, ligo virgo, ligo kagra, ligo india, france cordova nsf, kip thorne, rainer weiss