3 ms·
That sounds hilarious, but you must be quite unique in having this approach right? Or are the particule physics people playing similar games?
by im3w1l 5y ago
That sounds hilarious, but you must be quite unique in having this approach right? Or are the particule physics people playing similar games?
- pinko 5y agoUnique as far as I know, at least in a scientific collaboration like ours. But we were unusually sensitive to the risk of false detections given (a) skepticism of LIGO's prospects from other physicists, and (b) the lingering stain of a false detection claim, from a bar detector, a few decades earlier. We believed that if we had announced a discovery that turned out to be wrong, it would probably have meant the end of our experiment, and in practice the end of the field, at least for a long time. It was fortuitous that the first detection turned out to be gold plated and unambiguous, otherwise we would have probably published a bunch of "we saw something interesting but can't claim it as a GW discovery" papers on the next few weaker events before we would have felt comfortable making a confident claim.
- airstrike 5y agoThank you for all these replies and for the fantastic work you and the team do. This is now my favorite AMA
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoNot quite the same lengths, but AIRC LHC uses two detectors with substantial design differences, and partitions the teams from sharing information for some of what they target, as a way to reduce systemic errors.