The first direct detection of gravitational waves was revealed to the world on 11 February 2016 and has generated headlines around the world. For the opening in 2017 of physics received the Nobel prize and launched a new era of gravitational astronomy. But a group of physicists from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, put this discovery into question based on their own independent analysis, which was conducted during the last two and a half years.
As reported by New Scientist, a team of scientists believes that the initial gravitational signal out detected by LIGO, was “an illusion”. Scholars argue that collaboration mistook the noise patterns in the signal. The magazine itself is somehow described the work as “exclusive”, although the representative of the group of Andrew Jackson for quite some time to the drum beats. The work of scientists who discovered the gravitational waves, was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics in August of that year, and since then, the community of physicists was considerable debate on statements by Jackson.
Gravitational waves — an illusion?
The representative of the LIGO David shoemaker of mit believes that the dispute boils down to misunderstanding of the methods by LIGO in the data analysis. “Jackson is still skeptical about them, and I think skepticism in science is a pretty important thing. You have to question the result,” he says. “But the data are complex, difficult to understand them. Of course, nothing that they did not give us any reason to doubt our results.”
Although LIGO has acquired (not entirely deserved) reputation solely secret agencies, shoemaker says that collaboration spent a lot of time to communicate with Jackson and his band for the last two years to improve their understanding of the ways of LIGO, including the invitation of Jackson and others at the Niels Bohr Institute, to enable them to discuss the question in teleconferences with members of the LIGO team.
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