Recently, the New Scientist magazine published an article describing our concerns regarding LIGO’s claims of the detection of the gravitational event GW150914. We have at no point challenged the existence of a signal in GW150914 distinct from detector noise, our concern is related to the physical interpretation of this signal as a gravitational wave from the merger of a black hole binary. In this regard, we have observed statistically significant abnormal correlations in the residuals of the Hanford and Livingston detectors when the presumed gravitational wave signal has been removed.
The various LIGO responses to this article can be found at:
Facebook and ligo.org
The second of these links once again stresses LIGO’s familiar claim that the “entire gravitational-wave signal data stream from the first observing run is already publicly available” and promises yet another LIGO “instructional” paper that “will provide more details about LIGO detector noise properties and the data analysis techniques used”.
We believe it is essential for LIGO to respond to the following simple points:
1. If LIGO files with Hanford and Livingston residuals
https://www.gw-openscience.org/GW150914data/P150914/fig1-residual-H.txt
https://www.gw-openscience.org/GW150914data/P150914/fig1-residual-L.txt
were made for the sole purpose of illustration, what are the correct files with the waveforms actually used, and why has LIGO not made them public?
2. If our analysis of correlations is incorrect and there is some error in our publicly available programs, LIGO must point out precisely where we have made a computational mistake.
3. If the cross correlations are present and their residual files are correct, why does LIGO consider this statistically significant 80% correlation to be irrelevant for the physical interpretation of the signal?
4. Unfortunately, our attempts to identify members of the LIGO collaboration with responsibility for data analysis have been unsuccessful. While we have had many discussions with co-authors of the original Physical Review Letters publications, none of them have been able to speak officially on behalf of LIGO. This is why we believe it would be extremely useful for LIGO to identify some individual or a group of scientists to represent LIGO with the aim of resolving these differences of interpretation in an appropriately professional manner.