3 ms·

> 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)

> 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

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