Dear Cambridge Philosophers of Science, Our fourth and final CamPoS talk is Wednesday the 24th of May, 'today' when most of you see this. We have Lydia Patton from Virginia Tech talking about 'Listening to the Chirps: How do the LIGO results test general relativity?'.
Her abstract follows. As usual, CamPoS meets in the basement of HPS (Seminar Room 2) from 1-2:30. Sincerely, Brian Pitts Abstract: 'LIGO's detection of gravitational waves is one of the most significant recent experimental results in physics. But moving from the data to conclusions about the parameters of the binary black hole (BBH) systems that are the data's putative source is not trivial. And it is by means of parameter estimation that the real test of general relativity will take place. Many current presentations of the LIGO results focus on how the detection confirms general relativity, or Einstein's predictions. But ideally the detection of BBH systems should provide a heuristic platform for further research, and for ever more rigorous testing of the theory. I explain how the results can be taken to decide between Newtonian theory and GR. But I also argue that existing ways of parsing the observed data could go farther to provide a platform for testing. Finally, the paper explores ways of analyzing the LIGO results to draw conclusions about how theories can be robust in applied contexts.' -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
