Catering to the masses
3 Mar 2007 1:05:12 UTC
Topic 192494
(moderation:
Einstein at home receives support from two basic communities: Scientific and Laymen. The latter understand the basic thrust of the effort is to detect gravity waves from pulsars and black holes to further test aspects of Einstein's theories.
Still, I think this excerpted example of scientific jargon could be improved to better communicate with the layman:
"10. What would it look like if there were a pulsar near enough to detect?
If there were a pulsar close enough to confidently detect, we expect that it would exceed the 2F=25 threshold in most or all of the sixty different 10-hour data segments. Thus it would lead to a large number count for some sky position in the coincidence plots shown in the next sections. In fact, we will see in the following sections that Gaussian noise alone produces a number count of only around six by chance.
How can we know if this would really work? There are two different checks that our data analysis procedures are working correctly and could detect a source.
HARDWARE INJECTIONS
About one-third of the time when the S3 data was taken, ten simulated pulsar signals were 'injected' in real time into the detector hardware. To be sure that they would not cause unanticipated problems in subsequent data analysis, these hardware injections were not done during the entire S3 run. So they do not completely duplicate what would happen if a real signal were present. These hardware injections are present in about one-third (roughly 20) of the ten-hour data segments analyzed by Einstein@Home.
SOFTWARE INJECTIONS
In preparing the (final, second time through) S3 data for distribution by Einstein@Home, we added an additional set of six 'software simulated' pulsars into the data set. The signals were present in all of the data, but their amplitudes were chosen near the expected threshold of sensitivity. Hence these simulated signals exceed the threshold in approximately half (roughly 30) of the ten-hour data segments analyzed by Einstein@Home."
On the other hand, perhaps I looked in the wrong place and I am the wrong audience for the explanation.
Catering to the masses
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It may be helpful to know that there are many, many factors that are continuously taken into account in addition to the injections. I think the injections are performed periodically, and put on hold for quieter times if necessary, for instance, as when a gamma ray burst event has been recently detected. But basically, you know it would work, because you keep testing to verify that it is indeed working: the injected signals show up as expected in the analysis pipeline.
Regarding some finer points on the confidence of signals in coincident data, see this post of Mike Hewson's in the Detector Watch 2 thread on the Science board.
If it's a question about the LIGOs, you can be reasonably certain of getting responses on any of the E@H message boards, although the Science board would probably be the best choice.