Gravitational Waves: The Silent Disaster
Despite high expectations, the LIGO and VIRGO detectors have been producing nothing more than false alarms for almost 11 months. This raises serious questions about the method being applied.
With the award of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne, the question of whether gravitational waves have been directly detected seemed to be settled forever. Since then, gravitational waves have entered the discourse of fundamental physics. The decision of the Nobel Committee was based on the extraordinarily strong gravitational wave signal GW150914 presented at a press conference in February 2016, and on the signal GW170817. The latter was attributed to a merger of two neutron stars, because two other telescopes had registered a coincident signal. More on this later.
The discovery of gravitational waves elicited enthusiastic reactions and a new era of astronomy was expected. Gravitational waves, the “new window” to the universe, would join the other telescopes and lead to completely new insights. Many compared this discovery to Galileo’s first use of the telescope in 1609. The community was therefore excited when the sensitivity of the already successful detectors was again significantly improved. One didn’t have to be an optimist to expect dozens of spectacular events for the O3 observing run, which became…
