thank you but for the record, here is a reply as to what I am thinking about, and not just about LIGO: This is in my direct reply as to another essay, but it is relevant in answering what you raised and what I am trying to say:
quote
Here is my nit and it is a big one. The idea of "change" means that there is change as to the , say the parameters of nature, i.e. say the fundamental constants of nature.
What evidence is there for this ?
That is my nit in a nutshell. The bromide of 'acceptance of change' sounds euphoric and a panacea, but in reality change in physical models comes out from the "irresistable force " meeting the immovable object. I.e. if you want a great example of this, look at the 19th century Ultraviolent catastrophe which eventually frustrated Planck into his black body spectrum. This only after the 19th classical physics laws were shown as worse than useless
Every single advance in physics has come from the WTF mode of, "dear this ain't working" clash between an old model and then DATA which flatly contradicted the old model.
That has been a given for over 180 years and it is going to be the same in the future. I.e. we do not get an idealized "acceptance" of change for its own sake. What we do get is that we find that what we THOUGHT was true, simply blows it as far as what we OBSERVE
The latest WTF moment we have will be eventually say when people GET IT, that ahem SUSY, as romantic as it sounds does not have EXPERIMENTAL data sets supporting it directly. I like GW physics. The issue of if we have massless or massive Gravity remains a hotly contested area (classical versus heavy gravity). How many of you have heard of spin 3/2 Gravitinos directly OBSERVED
Well we DO NOT HAVE DIRECT confirmation'
This is what made the Higgs discovery so welcome and fantastic. It was and is observed directly
Bonus points , do we have HIGGSINOS, or say Susy partners of the Higgs directly oberved?
Ahem, NO
And this is the same banging ones head against the wall datum, in a dance which is how we stubbornly blunder from one insight to the next\
end of quote
A. The problem why we get stuck as we were for over 30 years about the Ultraviolet catastrophe, is that the fundamental issues as to the organization of theories is often sadly neglected. Planck came up with his ad hoc Planck distribution rule, to fit the data, but over 30 years commenced before anyone asked really what was WRONG with the classical laws which lead to the birth of Quantum physics. Why 30 years ?
My proposal is to mandate that we have a bit more attention paid to the foundations.
B. As a GW scientists (yes I am one) I applaud LIGO, up to a point. It served ALL of us well. But here is the problem
We have a current debate between massless and "massive " gravity. That is all to the good, As you know far better than I, Gravitons with say 10^-65 grams travel a weensy bit slower that Spin two gravitons.
This should be cleared up. Is Massive gravity actually the way to go ? YES OR NO. The rewards for paying attention to getting a real answer would be cataclysmic.
However, the duet as to massless and massive gravity is NOTHING compared to the SUSY super partner to the GRAVITON- i.e. the Gravitino
Do we have DIRECT evidence that it exists ? We really should focus on what is, or is not it, and SUSY is necessary
There are all sorts of loose ends on these topics.
Having people pay attention to the foundations may revolutionalize science as we know it.
Finally, I firmly stand behind getting rid of class , race, and sexual discriminatory practices. If you want to consign half the human race to being not contributing, COUNT ME OUT. If you wish to penalize "foreigners" who are brilliant ? Count me out
That is the sort of thing I am bringing up with feeling