Elder, Jamee (2023) On the “Direct Detection” of Gravitational Waves. [Preprint]

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Abstract

In this paper I provide an account of the sense in which the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration's 2015 observation, "GW150914" constituted the first "direct detection" of gravitational waves. Roughly, my account leverages the conceptual resources from recent work in the philosophy of measurement (especially Parker (2017)’s distinction between direct and derived measurements) to distinguish between these detections at the level of the modeling of the measurement processes. This distinction also has epistemic importance, because the choices scientists make about how to model measurement processes are related to the kinds of interventions they can perform to test the adequacy of their models. The direct/indirect distinction concerns the nature of the justification for confidence in the measurement outcome—in the direct case, this is based primarily on models of the measuring system, while in in the indirect case it also relies on models of a separate target system. Since astrophysical systems are not amenable to interventions, observations of the Hulse-Taylor system, and indeed the source of GW150914, cannot be “direct” in the same way that detections of gravitational waves are.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Elder, Jamee jamee.elder@gmail.com 0000-0002-1482-5682
Keywords:	gravitational waves, black holes, measurement, detection, experiment, observation
Subjects:	General Issues > Data Specific Sciences > Physics > Astrophysics General Issues > Experimentation Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory General Issues > Theory/Observation
Depositing User:	Jamee Elder
Date Deposited:	07 Sep 2024 12:41
Last Modified:	07 Sep 2024 12:41
Item ID:	23880
Subjects:	General Issues > Data Specific Sciences > Physics > Astrophysics General Issues > Experimentation Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory General Issues > Theory/Observation
Date:	2023
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23880

Available Versions of this Item

• On the “Direct Detection” of Gravitational Waves. (deposited 28 Mar 2023 17:11)
  • On the “Direct Detection” of Gravitational Waves. (deposited 07 Sep 2024 12:41) [Currently Displayed]

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