Dear Phil,

I would like to correct some misleading information in your post dated 5/28/2009 8:00:02 AM.

First, the LIGO project is not a "billion dollar" project. NSF budget are available to the public and the LIGO cost can be easily checked at the NSF site:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=103042.

Second, "the entire LIGO instrument has turned out to be a complete failure" is an incorrect statement, as it can be proved by LIGO's recognized accomplishments. The list of published observational papers of the LIGO Collaboration can be found at https://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/ppcomm/Papers.html. Among recent scientific results that are worth mentioning, please see ApJ Lett 683 (2008) 45 (a layman explanation of the results can be found at http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13154) and Astrophys. J. 681 (2008) 1419 (see also http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13084). These are just two examples.

If your "complete failure" statement refers to the fact that LIGO has not directly detected a
gravitational-wave signal to date, I should remind you that the initial LIGO observatory was not expected to lead to "glowing" detection of gravitational waves, as any expert in the field recognizes. Initial LIGO should be considered a testbed for the planned advanced LIGO configuration. Advanced LIGO will improve the instrument sensitivity of initial LIGO by approximately an order of magnitude, exceeding the integrated observations of initial LIGO in its first several hours of operation. This will enable us to study sources which were not accessible to initial LIGO, and to extract even more astrophysical information.

Finally, It is also my personal opinion that the tone of your statement is quite offensive to the hundreds of researchers, students and staff who have contributed to the experiment.

Marco Cavaglia

The views expressed above are those of the author and may not reflect opinion of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, its members or associates.