So funny story. LIGO's number two guy was my best friend's dad, and I was there with them both at Caltech when they were still messing around with their demo gadget, rather than the geographical array. Who shows up but another guy I knew from high school, who I tried real hard not to get recognized by because he's really annoying. He did, of course, but not before expressing his skepticism that LIGO was going to be sensitive enough to detect anything; he ended up not going to Caltech because in his opinion, LIGO was "around six orders of magnitude" too insensitive to detect a neutron star.
I can see that, though not where he got six orders of magnitude. Gravitational waves could have been dissipating and losing coherency a lot faster than they turned out to do, sure, but that's about four more than I could conjure (assuming 10^3-10^4 ly distance to a binary). It wouldn't be surprising if my approximation would be equally garbage, since these were my doodles on Xeelee, but that's the unfortunate truth about the horizons of science: it's not that far from "it's like, your opinion, man" with math until there's an observation. Always glad to hear these kinds of stories. By the way, I want to stress that I don't endorse Baxter, from horrible character writing through goofy names to being nowhere near as scientifically accurate as many tout, but I got interested when someone recommended Flux with "a society of primitive posthumans inside a neutron star deals with impending ecological collapse."he ended up not going to Caltech because in his opinion, LIGO was "around six orders of magnitude" too insensitive to detect a neutron star.
Everyone was an undergrad once. The undergrad in question, of course, denies the discussion ever happened.By the way, I want to stress that I don't endorse Baxter,