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Physics

LIGO to publish new paper in wake of 快猫短视频 investigation

By Joshua Howgego

2 November 2018

People watch the discovery announcement

Gravitational waver were predicted by Einstein

David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which detected gravitational waves in 2015, has announced聽that it will publish a detailed explanation of .

The announcement, on 1 November, comes in the wake of an exclusive聽快猫短视频 investigation that exposed questions about the analysis underpinning the breakthrough discovery. The full investigation can be read here by subscribers.

LIGO’s 2015 announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves was one of the most exciting findings in physics for decades. The discovery聽confirmed a prediction made by Einstein, that space-time itself can squeeze and stretch in rhythmic waves, when deformed by cataclysmic events, like the collision of black holes. The collaboration鈥檚 founders were awarded the Nobel prize in physics in 2017.

But detecting gravitational waves is hugely challenging. LIGO鈥檚 detectors aim to measure a shortening of space equivalent to about a thousandth of the width of a proton. This sort of measurement is swamped by natural thermal vibrations, known as noise, that make picking out the signal from a gravitational wave tricky. To deal with this, the collaboration used聽sophisticated analysis techniques to remove this noise聽their data, but these analysis techniques are being questioned.

The claims were first aired by a group of Danish researchers a few years ago. Since then, they have published their doubts in聽a peer reviewed journal.聽The LIGO collaboration has not yet聽published聽any papers clarifying their approach in response.

That much was common knowledge in the physics community. But聽the聽快猫短视频 investigation uncovered a number of irregularities, including a published data plot drawn “by eye” rather than with real data.

LIGO now says they are聽in the process of preparing their paper, which will provide more information about their analysis techniques, but has not stated when this is likely to be published.

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