B Are Gravitational Waves accepted?

[nmsurobert]

Is this accepted throughout the science community now? Is there any doubt that LIGO actually detected gravity in the form of waves?

 

[PeterDonis]

There have been some criticisms published of the LIGO results. AFAIK none of them have any real traction in the scientific community in general; the general belief appears to be that the LIGO results are valid.

 

[George Jones]

The paper "On the times lags from LIGO signals"

https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04191v2

has been accepted for publication. From the abstract:

.. we report correlations in the detector noise which, at the time of the event, happen to be maximized for the same time lag as that found for the event itself ... A clear distinction between signal and noise therefore remains to be established in order to determine the contribution of gravitational waves to the detected signals.

See the interesting discussion "On the time lags of the LIGO signals" at cosmologist Peter Cole's blog "In the Dark"

I suspect that this criticism will not remain viable when a detector at a third location comes on line.

 

[phyzguy]

Also, if (when) a GW event with an optical and/or gamma-ray counterpart is detected, this should remove all doubt.