Life is too short to correct all your mistakes but since you have brought it up again I will oblige you.
One wonders if your response will include more of your "truth by (your own personal FALSE) proclamation" routine, like the Thomson redshift nonsense you refuse to support.
Like every other example you have thrown up in this thread you botch it by missing out on important detail; in this case BH mergers are stellar BHs not supermassive BHs as in the centre of galaxies.
Um, ya that's rather obvious since they routinely estimate their sizes in every event posting in the GraceDB database listing.
In our galaxy there is not a shred of evidence of binary stellar BHs with plasma accretion disks otherwise they would behave as X-ray binaries composed of a BH and a star.
Irony overload. There's not a shred of evidence of the existence of binary black holes *without* accretion disks either, nor does the LIGO data *forbid* them to have accretion disks! In fact, we pretty much *only* see black holes when they emit enough visible light from the torus (or jets) around the BH.
The very few X-ray binaries of this type known to exist, the BH strips the stars outer atmosphere into an accretion disk which then falls into the BH.
So essentially we just have to "have/hold faith" in a bunch of invisible objects that we've never observed to even begin this LIGO "discovery" process that you're asserting. It seems like the whole "science" aspect of this 'discovery' is based on "faith" from the start.
Before the plasma reaches the event horizon it is heated to millions of degrees K and emits X-rays.
Yes, I'm familiar with the process, which is why various LIGO's claims about about invisible black hole/neutron star mergers sounds so fishy. Somehow an entire neutron star is miraculously swallowed whole by a black hole without emitting any visible (on Earth) light at all. Nice magic trick.
The accretion disk is only around for as long as there is a star to supply matter to the disk.
In the case of binary BHs no such supply exists so one would not expect a plasma accretion disk to be common.
There are plenty of observations of gas/plasma falling into our own sun, so I fail to see why we wouldn't expect to see all black holes to contain some amount of material in orbit around them even before mergers happen. It might not emit a lot of light *before* the merge, but the merger should definitely affect the material in the torus.
Irony overload No (1);
Of course you are not biased at all despite the fact your only motivation in posting is trying to save your bacon.
Huh? I'm actually one of the *few* EU/PC proponents on planet Earth that A) embrace/accept the concept of massively heavy so called "black holes" and embrace/support GR theory who would even entertain the possibility that it's even possible to measure gravitational waves from such events.
Over the years, I've actually been hoping that gravitational waves would be found by LIGO. In fact, I've personally even devoted some of my own computer time in the (distant) past to help LIGO search for gravitational waves using a screen saver program they developed to help them sift through data.
I don't have any personal objection to LIGO finding evidence of gravitational waves, in fact I'd be excited for them if I *actually believed that they had* such evidence. I don't have any objection or hold any bias to the possibility of LIGO repeating the multimessenger events of 2017, in fact I'd be happy for them if they did. I would be relieved to know that this whole thing isn't another Joseph Weber scenario all over again. As it stands however, LIGO's methodology is simply terrible, and their (lack of) multimessenger results in 03 speak for themselves.
Let’s look at latest info on the 156 Mpc distant BNS.
Confirmed to be a binary neutron star merger.[39]
It was found in 2020 that a Gamma-ray burst was detected half a second after the gravitational wave event, lasting for 6 seconds and bearing remarkable similarities to GRB170817. The burst wasn't initially noted because the source was occulted by Earth when the Fermi telescope attempted follow-up.[38]
Observation of the second LIGO/Virgo event connected with binary...
So it looks like the total number of multi-messengers is now two.
So instead of asking me what would it take to change my position which is special pleading, I am asking you the same question on the basis of the evidence.
You avoided answering my question about what it would take to change your opinion like the plague, just as I figured, but by all means, let's take a quick look at your so called "evidence" of a second so called "multimessenger" event.
First of all, a quick glance at the LIGO GraceDB database for this event under the category of "EM observations" shows "No EM observation entries so far." Apparently the folks at LIGO are not convinced of the validity of this paper yet, or they'd *surely* jump all over the claims made in that paper.
But hey, it's a relatively new paper. You probably only heard about it from the recent video that I just posted to this thread by Sabine. In her video she also pointed out that other scientists have already criticized that particular paper, and she certainly didn't accept their claims at face value like you are, but far be it from me to not be open minded. Let's take a quick look at it anyway, shall we?
Before we begin, let's look at the basic facts according to LIGO. That particular event was evidently recorded by only one of the two LIGO detectors (Livingston) and by Virgo (?). Apparently the LIGO-Hanford detector was offline at the time. Unfortunately that precludes LIGO from being able to constrain the event to a 'small" region, rather it leaves us with a *massive* area of the sky where the signal might originate, making it much harder to make a high sigma correlation to a specific celestial event, and much harder to locate, assuming it even is a celestial event.
First of all, the authors themselves admit that:
No hard X-ray flares were detected in the field of view of the SPI and IBIS-ISGRI gamma-ray telescopes aboard INTEGRAL. This, as well as the lack of detection of gamma-ray emission from GRB190425 by the GBM monitor of the Fermi observatory......
So the *primary* instruments which are used to detect actual gamma ray bursts on Integral and on Fermi did *NOT* record any actual gamma ray bursts during that timeframe, nor did apparently any other satellite in space. So how do they try to "explain" that minor little problem?
.....assuming its occultation by the Earth, can significantly reduce the localization area for the source of this GW event.
Essentially they just "assumed" that the two "better" (in terms of reporting actual gamma ray bursts) instruments on Fermi and Integral were either blocked by the Earth itself, or in the case of the INTEGRAL satellite, limited in by it's primary field of view. So what do they do?
They apparently just "assumed" that they could sift through the raw Anti-Coincidence Shield (ACS) data, which is apparently completely devoid of spacial and specific spectral information in the "hope" of finding something in that set of data that might correlate with the LIGO timeline. Since lots of pulsars exist in space, and lot of variable data sources of x-rays and gamma rays exist in space (including the sun), not all that surprisingly they found something in the data that "could" be related to the LIGO event, but without any specific spectral or spacial correlation. It's just a raw photon count/timeline correlation at best case.
I did read the whole paper, and I will say that it's "interesting" in the sense that the timeline seems to fit the LIGO timeline, but the number of "assumptions" which they made *in their favor* were numerous, starting with their assertions that FERMI's view of the event was blocked by the Earth, and Integral's primary equipment couldn't see the event because it occurred at an acute angle to that instrument. They assume it wasn't caused by a solar flare or something else entirely. They also assume (though the data would seem to support it) that other less sensitive satellites in space would not have the capacity to see the event due to it's distance, and the "dimness" of the signal.
Their sigma figures look to me to be 'semi-reasonable' figures *only if* all of their other "assumptions" happen to be correct, but there's no real way to know how reliable those assumptions might actually be.
Now of course there is *zero* spacial correlation offered to correlate the LIGO data to the ACS data, and no other instrument on Earth or in space "saw" anything which could be spacially correlated in any way.
This is a *far cry* from anything even remotely like the 2017 multimessenger event where there *was* spacial correlation found between the LIGO data and the other (numerous) other observations on various wavelengths.
After reading the paper, I can see why LIGO hasn't yet upgraded the GraceDB database to include this paper as a visual confirmation of their observation yet, and Sabine didn't jump to the same conclusion you did. At best it's an "iffy" claim, but I'll grant you that it's not entirely without any scientific merit. There "could" be a correlation perhaps, but it's unclear without spacial correlation if the events are even remotely related. All I see is a timeline correlation at best case. The very best that one could say from that paper is that Integral's *secondary* instruments seem to show an uptick in higher energy photons around the same timeline as the LIGO signal, but no spacial correlation can be made between the data sets.
In short, "meh". Since it's a relatively new paper, and I haven't yet seen any published rebuttals to that paper yet, I won't write it off, but I certainly wouldn't call it "done deal" yet either, or call it a second example of "multimessenger astronomy" yet.
It is possible that someone might sift though other datasets from other satellites, use their "assumption" about why FERMI didn't see the event to focus their attention in the northern hemisphere and find something interesting, but without any specific spacial correlation to the LIGO data, it's certainly not a second example of multimessenger astronomy.
Irony overload No (2);
This is more than an ego but self grandiosity on display.
Shall we put you in the same category as say a Bruno or Galileo?
Did your analysis of the infamous section 9 (?) of the BICEP paper include making the prediction the data would be contaminated by metallic dipole radiation from galactic dust grains or was it more likely you didn’t like it because it clashed with your faith?
No "ego" was involved. What I pointed out back then was that BICEP2's entire claim about ruling out all other possible sources of the polarization patterns was originally based on just one (and only one) *unpublished* image from PLANCK, which as a dubious assumption. Furthermore, they essentially claimed to have "discovered" a Nobel Prize worthy discovery while apparently expecting the Planck team to do the actual hard work of elimination of contamination for them! I knew immediately from reading the paper that the Planck group would probably be rather upset at being put into that uncomfortable position. I also realized immediately that it was irrational to make such a bold assumption about eliminating all other possible causes of polarization patterns based on one (and only one) image from one satellite. BICEP2's "methodology" was sloppy, just like LIGO's methodology is sloppy.
LIGO's claim however is very unique and very different from BICEP2 in the sense that it's virtually impossible to "disprove" LIGO's claim because it's almost all based on purely *internal* data from very expensive to replicate hardware. It will take *much* longer for their argument to fall apart (assuming it ever does). That could *only* happen when more detectors come online, their ability to isolate the location of event improves significantly, and only if they continue to strike out in terms of replicating multimessenger support with improved triangulation capacity. It could be several more years before even the *possibility* of 'disproof" becomes possible, so I'll just have to wait and see how it goes.
Like I said, I'll be happy for them if they can demonstrate that these signals are celestial in origin rather than terrestrial in origin, but that can only happen if they can replicate multimessenger scenarios. Based on the 03 dataset, they've had to "backtrack" numerous times after first claiming the signal was likely to be celestial in origin, only to later admit that it probably was terrestrial in origin, so my concerns about blip transient type events has already been shown to be well founded. Evidently even multiple detectors can pick up terrestrial signals that look like GW events but are not. Only time will tell if *any* of them are actually celestial in origin.
I was less skeptical after the 2017 support, but after the 03 data I've seen thus far (including that Integral paper), I'm far more skeptical today.
