LIGO_casebook

VERITAS: So, Professor Danzmann, by what you have explained yourself with regard to length
standards, the LIGO instrument was never calibrated for measuring gravitational wave. Do
you agree?
DANZMANN: No. You have oversimplified the issue.
VERITAS: What is there to oversimplify? Either LIGO was calibrated using a displacement
standard near ten-thousandth of a proton diameter or it was calibrated using a displacement
standard orders of magnitude larger. Which one is it?
DANZMANN: It is the larger, but it works for the smaller case also. How it works is much too
complicated to describe here.
VERITAS: Have you described the justification for this unheard-of orders-of-magnitude
extrapolation in any public document?
DANZMANN: Well, not directly.
VERITAS: Are you saying that this is so complex that trained scientists like Professor
Engelhardt who worked at a Max Planck Institute or Dr. De who holds measurement and
instrumentation patents cannot understand? Is this the “You do not understand” response
for which LIGO has become so famous?
DANZMANN: Well, clearly the Nobel evaluators could understand; and clearly the entire
physics establishment could understand. So we are talking about a couple of people
disagreeing with a total scientific consensus.
VERITAS: So now we are moving to the Democracy argument. Is that the ultimate arbiter of
science?
DANZMANN: Scientific consensus has always been the way science progresses.
VERITAS: For the calibration that you did do, have you presented side-by-side comparison of
the mirror displacement trace vs your instrument readout trace. If not, why not?
DANZMANN: We have not. And the answer is too complicated.
VERITAS: Professor Danzmann, I submit to you that – all other faults aside – LIGO was never
calibrated for detection of gravitational wave. What calibration you have done is faulty. I
submit to you that Professor Engelhardt and Dr. De are the only people on record as having
actually understood the LIGO calibration science. I submit to you that all along you have been
trying to snow the critics with this complication argument. I submit to you that your vaunted
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