Conspiracy theories scientists investigated to try to explain gravitational wave detection

a reply to: ErosA433

Some of you also seem to be of the opinion that working at the LHC or one one of these experiments makes you rich. Sure a lecturer might get well paid but a research scientist... not so much... for the amount of effort and stress you have to put in, its really not worth it if you want to get wealthy.

The same could be said could be said of Pastors or Priests. They do it for a belief system and faith. They don't do it for the money. I'm off to study the EU theories again.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

who is this joker adhikari anyway?

a reply to: chr0naut

I think your assesment is spot on

originally posted by: chr0naut
But, on the other hand, LIGO had been running for 15 years with no results.

This particular version of LIGO had not been running for 15 years -- it had just been turned on. This new LIGO was outfitted with some modified equipment that would make the detector much more sensitive. It was only after they did the modifications that they detected the gravitational waves, and that happened almost immediately.

A conspiracy, then is not too far fetched.

The 2015 detection might have possibly been faked.

However (and as I mentioned in another post above) the 2017 detection was verified by several other independent instruments using several different methods of detection.

The way the 2017 event unfolded, LIGO was the first instrument to detect gravitational waves of the event, at which point it immediately sent an automated alert to many other observatories who then looked into the part of the sky where LIGO detected the gravitational waves. These other observatories (such as the Fermi Gamma Ray Observatory) then confirmed that an extremely energetic event had occurred exactly where and when LIGO said it had detected the gravitational wave source.

So while the 2015 event could have been falsified, LIGO went top great lengths to make sure future events (such as the 2017 event) could be independently confirmed.