S4 results publication
12 Apr 2008 12:54:44 UTC
Topic 193625
(moderation:
Hi all!
Just in case you missed the announcement of the E@H Homepage:
Quote:
Apr 11, 2008
The results of the Einstein@Home search on LIGO S4 data have been officially released on the arXiv.org e-print server. This is the first formal scientific publication resulting from the Einstein@Home project. A short public presentation of the results will be given this Sunday at the annual Spring Meeting of the American Physical Society in St. Louis.
Obviously the intended audience for this paper is the scientific community. I guess an abstract that is more comprehensible for non-physicists might be available later (like the one compiled for the S3 runs which is linked from the homepage).
CU
Bikeman
S4 results publication
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Good news! Interesting paper! Thank all from Einstein@Home and LIGO teams!
RE: Obviously the intended
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Try reading the paper itself, rather than the abstract. The paper can be obtained by following the 'PDF' link on the top right of the arXiv web page (here is the link to the PDF file). The introduction and conclusion should be understandable by non-physicists.
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: RE: Obviously the
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Did you break the the record for the authors' number?
Tullio
RE: RE: RE: Obviously
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I don't even want to think how difficult writing with that many authors is. I thought 6 was bad back in grad school.
Kathryn :o)
Einstein@Home Moderator
RE: Try reading the paper
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Yes, I did that. Even most of the stuff in between the abstract and the conclusion are quite readable for an amateur with some math background. But I guess there is some truth in the saying that each formula in a paper cuts the number of readers in half :-). I liked this presentation for the S3 results very much, maybe a similar thing can be compiled someday for the S4 results.
I wonder whether this is the intersection between the LSC staff and the Kleene closure of authors of referenced papers.
CU
Bikeman
RE: Did you break the the
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No. This is the standard LIGO Scientific Collaboration author list plus a few notable additions (such as David Anderson from BOINC). When we start publishing results from data taken after May 17 2007, the author lists will get even longer since that was the formal start of data exchange with the VIRGO detector (in Cascina Italy).
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: I don't even want to
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It's also complicated simply to work with such a large group, distributed over the globe. But it's necessary because the instruments are one-of-a-kind and are themselves very complex. So we have a lot of regular weekly telephone conferences and spend a lot of time on airplanes.
Getting back to the paper, yes the size of the collaboration also slows things down quite a bit. For example the first draft of this paper was ready in May 2007, but the process of internal review and correction plus formal review by the collaboration means that it has only now appeared.
The positive side of this is that when many scientists with different perspectives read the paper, they look closely at different facets of it and spot problems and mistakes that others have missed. So the paper that you are reading is significantly different and improved compared with the original May 2007 draft!
Cheers,
Bruce
PS: I can't resist the opportunity to end with a couple of related (and opposing) quotes from computer programming. I think that both statements below are correct!
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. (Eric S Raymond)
The honest truth is that having a lot of people staring at the code does not find the really nasty bugs. The really nasty bugs are found by a couple of really smart people who just kill themselves. (Bill Joy)
Director, Einstein@Home
RE: RE: Try reading the
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If someone inside the project wants to prepare an equation-free presentation along the lines of the S3 final-result web pages, I would encourage it. But right now, most of us want to focus on finishing the analysis of the data from S5. This is more sensitive data than S4, and we have developed better and more sensitive analysis tools.
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home
Hi all! Those who got
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Hi all!
Those who got hooked by the S4 paper might also be interested in http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0508/0508065v1.pdf "First all-sky upper limits from LIGO on the strength of periodic gravitational waves using the Hough transform" . I'm not a physicist, but as far as I understand it, the current S5R3 search uses a combination of methods described in these two papers.
CU
Bikeman
RE: Those who got hooked by
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That's absolutely correct. We are using a combination of the F-statistic method used in the current S4 paper, plus the Hough method described in the reference that you give. This combination is the 'state of the art' in terms of sensitivity.
Cheers,
Bruce
Director, Einstein@Home