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Umm, not sure what this clumsy attempt to rewrite science history is about? The internal nomenclature of those working within a particular approach cannot rest

Umm, not sure what this clumsy attempt to rewrite science history is about? The internal nomenclature of those working within a particular approach cannot restart the clock of an entire field? Resonant bars were the first generation of gravitational wave detectors, period. > they couldn’t work according to most physicists That certainly requires a reference. There were several teams around the world besides Weber pursuing the approach. You make it sound as if the physics behind these bars was crackpot. Fyi, you may be confusing physicists with astronomers. The prevailing notion in astro circles was indeed that the known pathways to gravitational waves and with calculations made using GR would be too weak to be detected. (Incidentally astronomers were notoriously hostile to any GR research anyway. Why spend money in a high risk esoteric field if you can keep doing the same stuff over and over?) But a new observational window can always throw a surprise. A previously unknown class of sources may hit you in the face despite your primitive instrument. Historically this happened repeatedly with x-rays, radio etc. Or the theory you use to make predictions may be deficient and not telling you the whole story... In this respect Weber was simply unlucky. The universe is in a sense slightly more "conventional" and less exciting than it could have been.

bowsamic 2y ago
> Resonant bars were the first generation of gravitational wave detectors, period. Well, too bad, no one in the field refers to it that way (I’m a LIGO member). Jess is pointing out how the language is used, not saying that it’s correct.
- defrost 2y ago
  Last I checked David Blair's in the field, what with the sapphire clock development and his son being part of the 14 September 2015 first detection event. IIRC David talked about his niobium bar from 1976 as a first generation gravity wave detector - we certainly referred to it as a gravity wave detector in 1982 and it was talked about as such at the fifth Marcel Grossmann meeting. But hey, you're a LIGO member.
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    I’ve met David Blair and he’s not someone I’d want to associate with at all
    - defrost 2y ago
      That's an interesting personal revelation that fails to address the question of whether or not he's in the field and whether the speakers on Gravitation at the fifth MGM in Perth consider his niobium resonant bar part of the generational development of gravity wave detectors.
  - jessriedel 2y ago
    Openrisk was commenting on how the language is used by practitioners in the field, for which being a LIGO member is directly relevant. It's a mistake to try and mock him for doing that. It just drives actual experts even further away from HN.
    - defrost 2y ago
      My comment goes directly to how practitioners in the field refer to early gravitational detectors .. unless you're of the opinion that David Blair and son are somehow not practitioners in the field? Harrison's first Longitude clock that worked at global scale was H4 .. the fourth in the series. The LIGO detector came into being as a direct result of the work on earlier first generation detectors and technology invented there (eg saphire clocks) not only made LIGO possible but there are actual experts that straddle multiple generations of detectors. It's completely understandable that those that came later and have perhaps only worked with LIGO, count detector generations by LIGO editions. These are not, of course, the same as detector generations. It's likely a mistake to try and gatekeep others that are aware of the history, as noted that can just drive actual experts away.
- openrisk 2y ago
  Combined with their second sentence that aims to discredit and erase an entire era / approach as crackpot, the implication is that this is indeed the "correct" way. There may be a lingering fear that the historical false detection claim could still tarnish the entire field but it feels overblown. This thread is about exploring "new ways" and it is very instructive to know and study the "old ways".
- adolph 2y ago
  A member of LIGO might be too close to tell what is the first gen. As a person without any connection to the field I see a paper making a distinction between the first generation of interferometric detectors and those using other means [0]. Likewise a couple of expanded papers from the ScienceDirect page on Gravitational Wave Detectors also cite non interferometric types as early work [1]: The earliest manmade gravitational wave detectors were based on a simple gedanken experiment: if two masses on a spring are momentarily stretched apart and then compressed by a gravitational wave, potential energy is imparted to the spring, independent of how coordinates are defined. from K. Riles, in Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics, 2013. 0. https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-2/2f1cb3e2779b8524c91c2554d8b9a055 https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-2/2f1cb3e2779b8524c91c... 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/gravitational-wave-detectors https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/g...
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    This is irrelevant to what I said
jessriedel 2y ago
> The internal nomenclature of those working within a particular approach cannot restart the clock of an entire field? As bowsamic said, I'm telling you what the field's nomenclature is, and then additionally explaining why it is used that way. > That certainly requires a reference. There were several teams around the world besides Weber pursuing the approach. They only pursued it after he published erroneous claims of discovery! https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st19 https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st19 Look, there are groups around the world doing lots of things the majority think are foolish. (The DAMA experiment comes to mind.) It's good and healthy that this is allowed, and indeed there is a smooth continuum between "very unlikely but I guess someone should be checking" and "lunacy". But we also shouldn't pretend all attempts are equally promising or reasonable. > Fyi, you may be confusing physicists with astronomers. The prevailing notion in astro circles was indeed that the known pathways to gravitational waves and with calculations made using GR would be too weak to be detected. I'm not confusing anything. The people who have the expertise to estimate limits on the strongest plausible gravitational waves are called "astrophysicists" for a reason. > In this respect Weber was simply unlucky. An extreme example to illustrate why this sort of lazy "it might have worked" thinking is wrong: If I argue that there is a heretofore unknown law of physics that causes black holes to form at low energies as long as it's in Wilmington NC and it's on the 17th Wednesday of the year, and if I build a special detector in my basement in Wilmington that looks for the black hole signature on such a day, and if I claim to see a positive signal, most people will not say that I "built the first generation of table-top black hole detectors". So saying "it might have worked, who knows?" just isn't enough. It's not a coincidence that Weber both (1) thought it was worthwhile to look for gravitational waves at a strength that was widely thought to be impossible and (2) deluded himself into thinking he had made a positive identification. If he had only done #1, and if he had been clear that he was looking under the lamp post just in case there was surprising new physics, a defense of Weber would be more plausible. (Not necessarily convincing, but at least plausible.) But the fact that he also did #2 strongly undermines arguments that he was clear-eyed about what he was doing.

bowsamic 2y ago

> Resonant bars were the first generation of gravitational wave detectors, period. Well, too bad, no one in the field refers to it that way (I’m a LIGO member). Jess is pointing out how the language is used, not saying that it’s correct.

defrost 2y ago
Last I checked David Blair's in the field, what with the sapphire clock development and his son being part of the 14 September 2015 first detection event. IIRC David talked about his niobium bar from 1976 as a first generation gravity wave detector - we certainly referred to it as a gravity wave detector in 1982 and it was talked about as such at the fifth Marcel Grossmann meeting. But hey, you're a LIGO member.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  I’ve met David Blair and he’s not someone I’d want to associate with at all
  - defrost 2y ago
    That's an interesting personal revelation that fails to address the question of whether or not he's in the field and whether the speakers on Gravitation at the fifth MGM in Perth consider his niobium resonant bar part of the generational development of gravity wave detectors.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  Openrisk was commenting on how the language is used by practitioners in the field, for which being a LIGO member is directly relevant. It's a mistake to try and mock him for doing that. It just drives actual experts even further away from HN.
  - defrost 2y ago
    My comment goes directly to how practitioners in the field refer to early gravitational detectors .. unless you're of the opinion that David Blair and son are somehow not practitioners in the field? Harrison's first Longitude clock that worked at global scale was H4 .. the fourth in the series. The LIGO detector came into being as a direct result of the work on earlier first generation detectors and technology invented there (eg saphire clocks) not only made LIGO possible but there are actual experts that straddle multiple generations of detectors. It's completely understandable that those that came later and have perhaps only worked with LIGO, count detector generations by LIGO editions. These are not, of course, the same as detector generations. It's likely a mistake to try and gatekeep others that are aware of the history, as noted that can just drive actual experts away.
openrisk 2y ago
Combined with their second sentence that aims to discredit and erase an entire era / approach as crackpot, the implication is that this is indeed the "correct" way. There may be a lingering fear that the historical false detection claim could still tarnish the entire field but it feels overblown. This thread is about exploring "new ways" and it is very instructive to know and study the "old ways".
adolph 2y ago
A member of LIGO might be too close to tell what is the first gen. As a person without any connection to the field I see a paper making a distinction between the first generation of interferometric detectors and those using other means [0]. Likewise a couple of expanded papers from the ScienceDirect page on Gravitational Wave Detectors also cite non interferometric types as early work [1]: The earliest manmade gravitational wave detectors were based on a simple gedanken experiment: if two masses on a spring are momentarily stretched apart and then compressed by a gravitational wave, potential energy is imparted to the spring, independent of how coordinates are defined. from K. Riles, in Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics, 2013. 0. https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-2/2f1cb3e2779b8524c91c2554d8b9a055 https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-2/2f1cb3e2779b8524c91c... 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/gravitational-wave-detectors https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/physics-and-astronomy/g...
- bowsamic 2y ago
  This is irrelevant to what I said

jessriedel 2y ago

> The internal nomenclature of those working within a particular approach cannot restart the clock of an entire field? As bowsamic said, I'm telling you what the field's nomenclature is, and then additionally explaining why it is used that way. > That certainly requires a reference. There were several teams around the world besides Weber pursuing the approach. They only pursued it after he published erroneous claims of discovery! https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st19 https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st19 Look, there are groups around the world doing lots of things the majority think are foolish. (The DAMA experiment comes to mind.) It's good and healthy that this is allowed, and indeed there is a smooth continuum between "very unlikely but I guess someone should be checking" and "lunacy". But we also shouldn't pretend all attempts are equally promising or reasonable. > Fyi, you may be confusing physicists with astronomers. The prevailing notion in astro circles was indeed that the known pathways to gravitational waves and with calculations made using GR would be too weak to be detected. I'm not confusing anything. The people who have the expertise to estimate limits on the strongest plausible gravitational waves are called "astrophysicists" for a reason. > In this respect Weber was simply unlucky. An extreme example to illustrate why this sort of lazy "it might have worked" thinking is wrong: If I argue that there is a heretofore unknown law of physics that causes black holes to form at low energies as long as it's in Wilmington NC and it's on the 17th Wednesday of the year, and if I build a special detector in my basement in Wilmington that looks for the black hole signature on such a day, and if I claim to see a positive signal, most people will not say that I "built the first generation of table-top black hole detectors". So saying "it might have worked, who knows?" just isn't enough. It's not a coincidence that Weber both (1) thought it was worthwhile to look for gravitational waves at a strength that was widely thought to be impossible and (2) deluded himself into thinking he had made a positive identification. If he had only done #1, and if he had been clear that he was looking under the lamp post just in case there was surprising new physics, a defense of Weber would be more plausible. (Not necessarily convincing, but at least plausible.) But the fact that he also did #2 strongly undermines arguments that he was clear-eyed about what he was doing.