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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

> Doesn't anyone looking to debunk the LIGO results need to first explain what is producing correlated signals at interferometers thousands of miles apart?

> Also, are the incidents we're receiving in the US producing similar data at VIRGO in Italy?

Yes and yes (also there was the optical/GRB confirmation for one of the events)

That's why I'm siding on the LIGO side of this

The whole article sounds like some "skeptics gone wild" trying to start a car with a banana then saying cars are fake because of it (and that's my behaved way of phrasing it)

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I'm on LIGO's side on this one, but I disagree that one must be able to offer an alternative explanation in order to claim a result is bogus. That is, I don't need an alternate theory in order to falsify yours.

Again, to be clear: I think the LIGO results are probably correct. There's a bunch of corroborating evidence, and from the outside it appears they've been acting is very much good faith. I'm just making an epistemology quibble.

That is, I don't need an alternate theory in order to falsify yours.

I phrased that poorly: what the critics need to explain is the apparent agreement between the prior model and the observations. It wasn't just a case where someone looked at an oscilloscope screen and said, "Whoa. Look at that. Aliens!" As I understand it, the LIGO results showed good conformance to their predictions.

Does that make their position completely bulletproof? No, nothing in science ever is, but it does place Jackson's dispute into the category of "extraordinary claims."

Agreed: the scientific community is supposed to havea consensus on [Popperian] falsificationism but seem to act like they don't really believe it quite often.

> the scientific community is supposed to havea consensus on [Popperian] falsificationism

You couldn't have it more wrong. See here, with more physics relevant points:

http://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/3/3/611 [PDF only]

And here with more science relevant points:

http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/2/4/635/htm [Different article, mobile friendly]

> That's why I'm siding on the LIGO side of this

Are you sure? Because then you must accept that c≠const, thus Ether exists.

No, I don't have to accept that, because I already know from my undergraduate physics that light doesn't travel at c in a medium.

LIGO measurements are performed in ultra-high-vacuum[0], so it's not a "speed of light in a medium" it's "speed of light in the vacuum", AKA c.

[0]: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/vacuum

Ultra high vacuum isn't vacuum. Achieving an actual vacuum is practically impossible in my understanding. Even in deep space you will probably have a few stray hydrogen atoms floating around.

Yes, this is problem, but two 200W lasers[0] separated by thousands of kilometres are able to filter out noise created by atoms or electrons easily. Moreover, 200W of energy applied to single atom will put away it from path of laser very quickly. At such powers and precision we may need to take into account flow of neutrino. It's possible that distant event created blast of neutrinos, which affected speed of light in vacuum.

[0]:https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/laser

I don't remember anything being discussed on that area based on LIGO data

Then remember me (Volodymyr M. Lisivka) and this moment, when you will need to quote.

Or this my message is even better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18196952 .

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