An 'unknown' burst of gravitational waves just lit up Earth's detectors:
Earth's gravitational wave observatories -- which hunt for ripples in the fabric of space-time -- just picked up something weird. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detectors recorded an unknown or unanticipated "burst" of gravitational waves on Jan. 14.
The gravitational waves we've detected so far usually relate to extreme cosmic events, like two black holes colliding or neutron stars finally merging after being caught in a death spiral. Burst gravitational waves have not been detected before and scientists hypothesize they may be linked to phenomena such as supernova or gamma ray bursts, producing a tiny "pop" when detected by the observatories.
This unanticipated burst has been dubbed, for now, S200114f, and was detected by the software that helped confirm the first detection of gravitational waves.
[...] Astronomers have already swung their telescopes to the interesting portion of the sky, listening in across different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum for a whisper of what might have occurred.
Previously:
LIGO Observes Lower Mass Black Hole Collision
First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
LIGO May Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars for the First Time
GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
Europe's "Virgo" Gravitational Wave Detector Suffers From "Microcracks"
LIGO Black Hole Echoes Hint at General-Relativity Breakdown
LIGO Data Probes Where General Relativity Might Break Down
Did the LIGO Gravitational Wave Detector Find Dark Matter?
Second Detection of Gravitational Waves Announced by LIGO
Related Stories
LIGO has announced a second detection of gravitational waves from a collision of two black holes. The discovery was announced at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting and will be published at a later date in Physical Review Letters:
Scientists announced today that they have once again detected ripples in space and time from two black holes colliding far away in the universe. The discovery comes just months after the first-ever detection of such "gravitational waves," and it suggests that smaller-sized black holes might be more numerous than many had thought. "It looks like there are going to be more of these black holes out there than we imagined," says David Reitze, the executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which recorded the latest rattle on Dec. 26, 2015.
[...] Upgrades completed in 2014 finally allowed the LIGO detectors to see gravitational waves. Last fall, they snagged their first signal — from two black holes colliding. Then in December, the detectors saw another collision, which occurred around 1.4 billion light-years from Earth. This time, researchers say, the black holes were about 14 and 8 times the mass of our sun. They combined to create a black hole, 21 times as massive as the sun. An entire sun's worth of mass was also converted into gravitational waves that passed through the Earth.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins hypothesize that the LIGO gravitational wave detector may have found dark matter:
The eight scientists from the Johns Hopkins Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy had already started making calculations when the discovery by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was announced in February. Their results, published recently in Physical Review Letters , unfold as a hypothesis suggesting a solution for an abiding mystery in astrophysics.
"We consider the possibility that the black hole binary detected by LIGO may be a signature of dark matter," wrote the scientists in their summary, referring to the black hole pair as a "binary." What follows are five pages of annotated mathematical equations showing how the researchers considered the mass of the two objects LIGO detected as a point of departure, suggesting that these objects could be part of the mysterious substance known to make up about 85 percent of the mass of the universe.
A matter of scientific speculation since the 1930s, dark matter has recently been studied with greater precision; more evidence has emerged since the 1970s, albeit always indirectly. While dark matter itself cannot yet be detected, its gravitational effects can be. For example, dark matter is believed to explain inconsistencies in the rotation of visible matter in galaxies.
There is a very readable summary available, as well.
Is dark matter, then, black holes that will eventually coalesce and prompt another Big Bang?
It took almost 100 years for the boldest of Einstein's General Relativity (GR) predictions, namely gravitational waves, to be experimentally observed. Now, that LIGO data is letting physicists probe where GR breaks down. It has long been thought that GR breaks down at extreme space-time curvatures, such as in the interior of black holes. The problem is that, by conventional wisdom, the interior of black holes are inaccessible because anything inside of the event horizon cannot escape out; however, other than being defined by the distance from the center of the black hole, there is nothing special about the event horizon and any unfortunate being who crosses through one would not notice anything being there.
In 2012 researchers realized that if quantum mechanics (QM) is correct, the black hole should be surrounded by a "firewall" of high energy particles. The paradox is that this isn't consistent with GR, but if there is no firewall, this is inconsistent with QM. When the LIGO data were released, Vítor Cardoso and colleagues from Lisbon argued that if a firewall does exist, then when two black holes merge, you should see echoes in the gravitational waves.
The Nature article notes:
The echoes arise because a firewall or any other kind of structure would effectively create a smeared-out region at the traditional event horizon. The inner edge of this region is the conventional event horizon, the boundary beyond which no light particles, or photons, can escape. The outer edge is more porous: a typical photon that crosses this boundary will be trapped by the black hole, but some will be able to escape, depending on their angle of approach. The effect would also partly trap gravitational waves released by the black-hole merger. They would bounce back and forth between the inner and outer edge with some escaping each time.
It was hailed as an elegant confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity — but ironically the discovery of gravitational waves earlier this year could herald the first evidence that the theory breaks down at the edge of black holes. Physicists have analysed the publicly released data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), and claim to have found "echoes" of the waves that seem to contradict general relativity's predictions.
The echoes could yet disappear with more data. If they persist, the finding would be extraordinary. Physicists have predicted that Einstein's hugely successful theory could break down in extreme scenarios, such as at the centre of black holes. The echoes would indicate the even more dramatic possibility that relativity fails at the black hole's edge, far from its core.
If the echoes go away, then general relativity will have withstood a test of its power — previously, it wasn't clear that physicists would be able to test their non-standard predictions.
The Virgo gravitational wave detector, which is needed to triangulate the position of gravitational wave sources, is suffering from "microcracks" in sensitive glass and steel fibers:
On 20 February, dignitaries will descend on Virgo, Europe's premier gravitational wave detector near Pisa, Italy, for a dedication ceremony to celebrate a 5-year, €24 million upgrade. But the pomp will belie nagging problems that are likely to keep Virgo from joining its U.S. counterpart, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), in a hunt for gravitational wave sources that was meant to start next month. What has hobbled the 3-kilometer-long observatory: glass threads just 0.4 millimeters thick, which have proved unexpectedly fragile. The delay, which could last a year, is "very frustrating for everyone," says LIGO team member Bruce Allen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany.
A year ago, LIGO confirmed a prediction made by Albert Einstein a century earlier: that violent cosmic events, like the merger of two black holes, would wrench the fabric of spacetime and emit ripples. But LIGO, with two instruments in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, cannot pinpoint the sources of the waves, which would let astronomers train other telescopes on them. Triangulating on the sources requires a third detector: Virgo.
[...] The tiniest vibrations—earth tremors, the rumble of trains, even surf crashing on distant beaches—can swamp the signal of gravitational waves. So engineers must painstakingly isolate the detectors from noise. At Virgo, for example, the mirrors are suspended at the end of a chain of seven pendulums. For the upgrade, steel wires connecting the mirror to the weight above it were replaced with pure glass fibers to reduce thermal and mechanical noise. But a year ago, the glass threads began shattering, sometimes days or weeks after the 40-kilogram mirrors were suspended from them. After months of investigation, the team found the culprit: microscopic particles of debris from the pumps of the upgraded vacuum system. When these particles settled on the glass fibers they created microcracks, which widened over days and weeks until the fibers failed. "The fibers are very robust until something touches their surface," says Giovanni Losurdo, Advanced Virgo project leader at Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Pisa.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced an observation of the merger of two black holes observed on 2017-01-04 having masses of approximately 31 and 19 times the mass of our sun (M⊙) at a distance of approximately 880 Mpc (megaparsec) or approximately 2.8 billion light years.
From the full open access report (pdf) which was published in Physical Review Letters, by the American Physical Society (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.221101):
LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory made physics history by managing to detect the previously elusive gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity for the first time. They have, since they began operation, thrice observed the gravitational wave signatures emitted by the mergers of what are believed to be massive binary black hole systems. However, there is no confirmation of these events beyond the gravitational wave detection since black hole mergers may not emit anything else besides the gravitational waves. However, the merger of two neutron stars such as what is predicted to eventually happen to the Hulse–Taylor binary (which provided the first indirect confirmation of gravitational waves in the 1970s) will not only produce copious gravitational waves but possibly also a gamma ray burst or some other associated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The gravitational waves emitted by such an event would be weaker and harder for LIGO to detect, but on August 18th, noted astrophysicist J. Craig Wheeler tweeted a tantalising hint that they might actually have seen just such a thing happen:
New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!
New Scientist reports that LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker has not denied the rumour, and it seemed that four days after Wheeler's tweet the Hubble Space Telescope had been observing a neutron star binary candidate in the galaxy NGC 4993, which has since been deleted. From the article:
LIGO spokesperson David Shoemaker dodged confirming or denying the rumours, saying only "A very exciting O2 Observing run is drawing to a close August 25. We look forward to posting a top-level update at that time."
Speculation is focused on NGC 4993, a galaxy about 130 million light years away in the Hydra constellation. Within it, a pair of neutron stars are entwined in a deadly dance. While astronomers are staying silent on whether they are engaged in optical follow-ups to a potential gravitational wave detection, last night the Hubble Space Telescope turned its focus to a binary neutron star merger within the galaxy. A publicly available image of this merger was later deleted.
Further coverage and commentary from astrophysicist Ethan Siegel at Starts With A Bang.
For the first time three gravitational wave detectors have recorded the same event. The detection was made by both LIGO and Advanced Virgo (which has just recently begun collecting data for the first time). From the news release:
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors.
The three-detector observation was made on August 14, 2017 at 10:30:43 UTC. The two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Virgo detector, located near Pisa, Italy, detected a transient gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes.
A paper about the event, known as GW170814, has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Even small black holes emit gravitational waves when they collide, and LIGO heard them
LIGO scientists say they have discovered gravitational waves coming from another black hole merger, and it's the tiniest one they've ever seen.
The findings, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the diversity of the black hole population — and may help scientists figure out why larger black holes appear to behave a little differently from the smaller ones.
"Its mass makes it very interesting," said Salvatore Vitale, a data analyst and theorist with the LIGO Lab at MIT. The discovery, he added, "really starts populating more of this low-mass region that [until now] was quite empty."
The black holes had estimated masses of around 12 and 7 solar masses.
Related: LIGO May Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars for the First Time
First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
"Kilonova" Observed Using Gravitational Waves, Sparking Era of "Multimessenger Astrophysics"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @06:45PM
Had bean burrito last night.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:00PM (5 children)
but, Betelgeuse is "still there" in the visible spectrum.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:23PM
I was wondering if it was from that star which is dimming in Orion's belt.
(Score: 1) by sfm on Wednesday January 15 2020, @09:13PM
Gravity waves are predicted to travel at the speed of light..... Could we find an optical
version of this "event" and test this hypothesis ?
Alternative statement: "Can you see Betelgeuse now ?? "
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:05PM (2 children)
Is it possible the core of Betelgeuse has collapsed but the shock waves have yet to effect the surface or brightness of the star?
I hope they are watching it closely, if the core did collapse we should see the effects in the next few days/weeks
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:29PM
Imagine if that's the case. Being able to detect the moment your star collapses, but likely utterly lacking the tech to outrun the anticipated supernova.
(NB: I'm no expert, but my understanding is that Betelgeuse is fiercely unlikely to have a healthy earthlike planet around it. Young, red giant with a huge radius, and vastly-variable radiation.)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:54PM
I'd bet there are several large telescopes trained on Betelgeuse 24-7 at this point.
Anything is possible, we haven't observed a good local supernova since Gallileo.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Troll) by DannyB on Wednesday January 15 2020, @07:22PM (17 children)
... such as local Earth tremors, quakes or ground shifting.
Would this affect Laser Interferometers?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by pe1rxq on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:16PM (10 children)
LIGO and Virgo are on different continents, if they both detect something at the same time it is probably not 'local' on Earth scale.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:30PM (8 children)
Very interesting. Thanks. I have no mod points remaining.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:44AM (7 children)
How is that interesting? The statement is false on its face and the post includes no reasoning or evidence or even a link.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:22PM (1 child)
I took it at face value without any googling.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @05:13PM
What do you need to google? You can't think of any events on earth that could move something the distance of half an atom on the other side?
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:47PM (4 children)
What is false about my statement?
Ligo is in the US (actually two sites in the US) and Virgo is in Italy. Are those no longer on different continents?
And if they both detect it the chances of both detecting a local earthquake are pretty low.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:57PM (3 children)
What is a "local earthquake"?
Hint: you are going to nuance yourself into oblivion. There are many geological events that can be felt all around the world at the sensitives of these interferometers.
(Score: 2) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:44PM (2 children)
Quakes are felt widely. But. Not. At. The. Same. instant. Compare Seismic (hundreds or thousands of meters per second) to light/gravity wave velocities of 300km/s = a six-figure difference (well, 60,000).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:56PM (1 child)
If you have enough quakes/etc (call them Earth Vibrations) eventually one will be close enough to equidistant from all the interferometers to hit at the same time. Especially if the trigger originates near the core. In China they have already started using "gravity wave" detection by the US/EU to predict earthquakes.
(Score: 2) by D2 on Friday January 17 2020, @07:40AM
https://media.giphy.com/media/2fs2I4ujlBf20/giphy.gif [giphy.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @05:42AM
Why? This argument makes no sense...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @08:19PM
It would if the designers didn't think about that problem...but they did, along with many other potential sources of error. To your question, the detectors are over a thousand miles apart. Lots more details here, https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/facts [caltech.edu]
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 15 2020, @09:48PM (4 children)
A recent /PBS Spacetime/ video I watched (or a Fermilab vid linked to therefrom) on youtube was talking about gravitational astrophysics, and mentionted that Ligo was now getting one merger signal *per week*! Once the third facility is up and running, the ability to pinpoint the event in the sky more exactly will mean much more powerful telescopes can be pointed in precisely the right direction for the full gamut of electromagnetic observations, things are only looking up.
Dear DoE, please keep finding room in your budget for this kind of thing. (It hasn't always.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 15 2020, @10:37PM
Thanks, that is interesting.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:02PM
Unless you're running a neutrino detector...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Thursday January 16 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)
Physicsgirl had an interesting youtube vid from her visit to one of the LIGOs too.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:23PM
I didn't see that one, but I did see some video on it.
They shine a laser at a mirror 4km away and compare the reflection looking for a change smaller than a single atom in thickness...
Just wow, truly, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:15PM (20 children)
If they don't see anything verifying where it came from it was probably a power fluctuation or something. It is idiotic to assume it is a gravitational wave rather than due to any other type of force their filters failed on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:58PM (16 children)
And what type of "force their filters failed on" would affect both detectors, exactly at the same time, on two different continents ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:45AM (15 children)
Literally anything that shakes the earth a tiny amount.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @01:54AM (1 child)
Probably related to the very next SN article: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-philippine-volcano-spews-lava-half-mile.html [phys.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @02:05AM
Or this ongoing phenomenon: https://in-other-news.us/2020/01/11/worlds-tallest-geyser-breaks-eruption-record/ [in-other-news.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @03:22AM (12 children)
Anything on/in the Earth that shakes things up (volcano, earthquake, bomb, etc) is transmitted around at the speed of sound in rock (earth crust material). https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/PamelaSpiegel.shtml [hypertextbook.com]
Something over 2 minutes to travel 1000 Km.
What LIGO detected must be external to the Earth, since it shook both detectors (or are there 3 now) nearly simultaneously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:19AM (5 children)
Wat?
If i hit a drum two people on other sides of the room equidistant from me will hear it near simultaneously. The sound does not need to travel sequentially from one site to the next. It travels in parallel from its origin outward. Do you agree?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:25AM (4 children)
But there are three detectors now, and no point equidistant between them...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:28AM (3 children)
hit send too soon, Here's the 3rd detector:
http://www.virgo-gw.eu/ [virgo-gw.eu] it's in Italy, the two LIGO installations are in USA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:53AM (2 children)
Taal Volcano, Philippines: 14°0′36″N 120°59′51″E
Pisa, Italy: 43.6313°N 10.5045°E
Hanford, USA: 46°27′18.52″N 119°24′27.56″W
Livingston, USA: 30°33′46.42″N 90°46′27.27″W
Taal -> Virgo = 10, 503 km
Taal -> Hanford = 10,989 km
Taal -> Livingston = 13,996 km
I just used this as an example but they are very close to equidistant. At 7 km/s the delay would be 5-6 min. But we see that is just an average, in realty the speed depends upon the rock type. It can vary from 1.8 km/s to 7.3 km/s, a factor of 4.5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-wave [wikipedia.org]
But to repeat, I am in no way attached to this Philippines example. I don't see why some other event couldn't occur deep in the earth and trigger a volcano though. That event could also be equidistant (in terms of travel time).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:58PM (1 child)
Um... P waves are a direct path. And are followed by S waves that travel at a different velocity so each such wave pair gives a seismometer an estimated distance to the origin.
Armchair physics by AC's often boils down to someone thinking their first moment considering a problem is wiser than a symposium of scientists that have studied it for decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:27PM
Nothing stops multiple tremors happening all over the globe to create false positives, you don't need a single event hitting all three (that would actually be easily thrown out as it would get weaker with distance travelled), multiple events could easily align to hit all three, like 99% of their work is discarding false positives
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:50AM (5 children)
Unless the event is exactly equidistant from the two detectors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:36AM (4 children)
Apparently in China they are using "gravitational waves" to predict earthquakes: https://www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/earthquake/index.html [certifiedchinesetranslation.com]
(Score: 2) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @10:03PM (3 children)
IANAE but that reads like lolwut city. Weatherwars-grade leaps of conclusions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @11:00PM (2 children)
So you don't trust the experts with a track history of predicted earthquakes then? Just spewing forth your uneducated opinion for us to enjoy. Thank you for almost instantaneously contradicting your post above.
(Score: 2) by D2 on Friday January 17 2020, @07:37AM (1 child)
I don't see predictions. By all means, link to a valid set of predictions for earthquakes.
I also see lots of hypotheses. I also see silly stuff, like declaring human error in time measurements (when such data is recorded in a way that doesn't involve human error, and can be reexamined). Or the hypothesis that cosmic gamma rays from gravitational collapses millions of light years away cause earthquakes, rather than plate tectonics. Lots of "if..." and "assuming..."
Most to the point, googling shows not much since 2016. The LIGO and sibling sensors are picking up bursts, happening simultaneously enough to deny physical wave dynamics as a cause.
And there's no new discussion of this idea tied to the above activity. If prediction were effective, each detection would be coalescing and reinforcing this idea. You'd post it here, naturally. Silence, to me, means the idea isn't succeeding.
And that's the glory of the scientific method... if a hypothesis works, it builds our trust. No faith, no woo-woo. Just results.
So long, troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @04:33PM
So you still deny that there are geological events that can happen to influence all sites at about the same time? Sorry, but that is just dumb. It goes against all common sense.
Whether such events are common enough to explain what it setting off the detectors is another matter (and I bet no one knows), but to deny it can happen at all... No. I reject your assumption wholeheartedly.
(Score: 2) by D2 on Thursday January 16 2020, @09:51PM (2 children)
No, it's idiotic to extrapolate from an anomaly that intrigues scientists worldwide into 'it is idiotic to assume'.
Science is happening. This is what it looks like. Yes, the next move is to LOOK FURTHER TO GET MORE DATA AND DERIVE AN EXPLANATION. No, it's not idiotic to call peers when a 'That's funny...'* moment happens. Go troll elsewhere.
*"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, 'Eureka! I've found it,' but, 'That's funny!" -- Isaac Asimov
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @11:10PM (1 child)
Tell that to these jokers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31573637 [nih.gov]
They found that while getting a *low* (only 16 g/day) dose of IV vitamin C for 4 days only 4% of patients with severe sepsis died. In the control group, 20% died. After they stopped the vitamin C the death rates were equal for the next 24 days. And oh yea, they found that everyone was deficient in vitamin C at the start of the study, even according to the governments very weak definition of deficient (just enough to prevent obvious scurvy).
They conclude:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31573637 [nih.gov]
So... sorry, it is a nice sounding saying but most people passing as "scientists" these days are more interested in CYA than learning new things. If you had the chance to decrease your risk of dying 5x from 20% to 4%, shouldn't that be interesting enough to note? And this is hardly the first study to report the same thing for nearly every illness (vitamin C is depleted and the patients need a lot to even get back to normal).
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday January 17 2020, @09:09AM
And in the vaccine study of regione Puglia district which, with active surveillance found a 300x increase in reported problems and a 4% grave adverse reactions 3% of which ascribable to the vaccine injection, they conclude that vaccines are safe.
https://www.libreidee.org/2018/11/la-puglia-4-reazioni-avverse-gravi-ogni-100-vaccini-iniettati/ [libreidee.org]
OTOH I think there are not many political/economic issues in the detection of gravitational waves. So unless they are looking for publicity they ought to be trustable.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 16 2020, @03:11AM
It's probably a series of rifts in the space-time continuum caused by subspace weapons between two warp-capable civilizations.