if there can be another explanation, then we should not jump to conclusions that it was definitely gravity waves. no one has a sub atomic picture of the energies causing the ripples, it could be anything, it's a force Science does not understand but it somewhat matches what Einstien said so therefore they just take his word on it.
The LIGO detectors are designed to eliminate false positives in a number of ways. First, there are two (actually three including a backup) separated by a lot of distance; one is in Louisiana and one is in Washington state. A confirmed signal requires both observatories to witness essentially identical signals within a limited window of time (because gravitational waves move at the speed of light, waves coming from different directions will hit the two detectors at slightly different times, but only within very specific constraints). Any random noise that one detector sees due to events nearby will not happen simultaneously at the other detector and can be eliminated.
Second, the experiment managers periodically inject false positive signals into the system to test the ability for the computer software and the instrument data analysts to both see the signals and properly distinguish them from noise. No one is told when these tests will happen, so when the actual signal was first detected by the operators they were not sure if it was just another test or not.
Third, the detectors are not just detecting binary signals, meaning they aren't just saying they saw or did not see a signal. They can measure them to a high enough degree that they can measure the way the signals oscillate and change over time. Gravitational waves are predicted to have very specific waveforms for specific events that are distinguishable from random noise and all other possible sources of the signal. The specific signal they were looking for were gravitational waves coming from merging black holes of roughly super-stellar mass (dozens of solar masses). GR makes very precise predictions for how such a system will merge, including how much energy is radiated away and therefore how quickly the orbits of the black holes will decay. This causes a very distinctive shift in the signal as the oscillations increase in frequency. GR doesn't just predict that the detectors will see something, GR also predicts the exact signal.
In other words, at the moment there is no better explanation.
What if I told you that they are wrong and this is MY confirmation of Dark Matter theory? what would you say if I had actually been able to 'request' this physics mess-up in our quadrant by instigating it? what would you say if I told you I instigated it on purpose to make scientists freak out? guess I'll have to try harder next time to come up with some physics bending that people aren't looking for.
That your pathological delusions were exceeding pharmacological limits.
But to everyone else I would say that Science doesn't work that way. The difference between Einstein and you isn't just hair style and the fact that he was actually a smart guy. It is that Einstein did two things you don't. First, Einstein communicated his ideas in precise language and in a way that his colleagues could both properly understand them and have a reasonable chance to challenge and refute them. In other words, Einstein was intellectually honest. Second, Einstein's theories make real predictions that are both testable and falsifiable by third parties. Einstein is dead but we don't need him around to test his theories because his theories are available for anyone to publicly test. And Einstein made predictions *before* the tests were actually conducted. That's what makes them predictions and not postdictions. Einstein's theory predicts gravitational waves, and did so a hundred years ago before anyone could have known if they actually existed or not. The fact that Einstein's two theories of relativity make extremely precise predictions of phenomena never before witnessed and that are contrary to intuition, and we've now confirmed *all* of them is why we care about Einstein's theories, and don't care about Joshex's "theories."
General relativity made several predictions:
1. Orbits will precess due to the influence of gravitational energy on space-time. Although it was known in Einstein's time that Mercury's orbit deviated by the predictions of Newton and Kepler, GR predicts that all orbits will have a similar, if smaller, deviation from the classical prediction. Subsequent to GR, those deviations were detected in the orbits of Venus and the Earth, and in precisely the way GR predicts.
2. Orbiting objects will emit gravitational waves, and thus all orbits decay. This decay was already measured in binary pulsar systems, which matches the prediction. The detection of gravitational waves themselves provides direct confirmation of the mechanism of gravitational wave energy radiation.
3. Gravity will bend rays of light in a very specific way due to the changes in space-time geodesics that is different than the predictions of classical physics would if gravity were treated as Newtonian and photons were treated as having an energy-mass equivalent due to special relativity. Gravitational lensing has been observed, and is consistent with GR and not consistent with any other explanation for light curving.
4. Clocks run slower in stronger gravitational fields. This has also been directly observed using atomic clocks. Most notably, the orbiting satellites for the global positioning system (GPS) have to take GR into account for their time calculations to work. GR predicts those clocks will run differently than clocks closer to the Earth due to gravitational time dilation, and GPS confirms those calculations with precision.
5. Gravitational frame dragging: GR predicts that when a massive body rotates, the actual space-time around the object gets "dragged" in the direction of rotation, causing observable effects in otherwise empty space with no classical forces operating. There are various experiments which have demonstrated or observed these effects.
Einstein's theories made these predictions *before* experiments were done to show the effects (noting the issue with Mercury's orbit which is considered a postdiction on its own anyway), and did so in ways that third parties could calculate *precisely* what the theories predicted and then either confirm the predictions or refute them. We don't so much trust Einstein, especially because he's dead, but we trust special relativity and general relativity because not only do they make predictions, they make unexpected predictions that have so far always turned out to be true, and true not just vaguely but with precision.
If I try to guess the order of a deck of playing cards, that can go in a number of ways. I can say "the next card is like a face card" and when it turns up an ace I could say "lots of people think aces are face cards, so I'm not wrong." And then say :the next card is a heart" and when it turns up the nine of diamonds I can say "I was close, it was a red card" and then when I start accusing everyone of nit picking my guesses you know I'm completely full of shit.
If I predict the first card will be red and it is the king of hearts, and the next card will be black and it is the nine of spades, you might think there's something going on, or you might think I'm lucky. It is hard to say.
If I predict the first ten cards will be the ace of spades, the nine of diamonds, the king of hearts, the nine of spades, the ten of clubs, the six of clubs, the queen of hearts, the two of spades, the jack of clubs, and the seven of hearts, and they all come up like that, now you know I'm cheating or a wizard. Nobody is that lucky, so I have to have direct knowledge of the order of the cards somehow.
Special and General Relativity have made the equivalent of guessing a billion cards in a row correctly. We believe that can't be luck. We believe instead that it is much more likely that SR and GR encapsulate something fundamental about the universe, such that it is always right so far because it "knows" something.
We also insist that anyone making the claim to either be able to "disprove" SR or GR do better. SR and GR have a track record. Nothing is going to change that. They *might* be wrong in the future in some situation we haven't seen yet, but nothing will change the fact that SR and GR are correct now. Einstein didn't suddenly make every single experiment that Newton performed wrong. Newton was still right then. It just isn't as good as Einstein now. Anything that replaces SR and GR will have to contend with the fact that it must make the same predictions as SR and GR to the same very high precision, or *they* will be wrong.
So what do I tell someone that claims to have a better explanation for the gravity wave detection at LIGO? Prove it. Go smart or go home.
