Monday, February 15, 2016
20 comments:
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Anonymous said...
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One need only consider that in 2016, LANL is led by classic LLNL managers (you know the ones who brought you NIF), and Bechtel throwbacks (the ones who steal your pension and molest your secretary).
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2/15/2016 5:21 PM
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Anonymous said...
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NIF has nothing to do with "black holes", unless it might create one with a huge (and I mean huge !) implosion and that would be trumptacular. Which classic LLNL managers are you referring to by the way ?
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2/15/2016 8:21 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Which classic LLNL managers are you referring to by the way ?
February 15, 2016 at 8:21 PM
Anastasio, McMillan, Mara, Knapp, etc... -
2/15/2016 8:39 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Read the press release and understand that it is all about Charlie. Always has been, and always will be. The headline about the discovery is just a vehicle to carry the story about GQ.
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2/16/2016 8:17 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Others are starting to notice this as well. From the Santafenewmexican in the comment section.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/health_and_science/lanl-scientists-had-faith-discovery-was-just-a-matter-of/article_cf160d32-0406
LANL scientists had faith discovery was just a matter of time
Jay Coghlan · Executive Director at Nuclear Watch New Mexico
This is a great headline for LANL on the front page of The New Mexican associating the Lab with what may be one of the most important discoveries in astrophysics of all time. But notice that LANL didn’t do it, but is instead riding on the coattails on others. Meanwhile, the budget category in the just released FY 2017 federal budget for “Science” at LANL is cut from $71 million to $62.3 million, only 2.6% of the Lab’s total annual budget of ~$2.4 billion. This belies the false image that LANL management likes to publicly project that the Lab is some kind of science campus.
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2/17/2016 6:44 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Looks like LANL has removed the press release. We should give them some credit for doing the right thing. -
2/17/2016 12:12 PM
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Anonymous said...
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We should give them some credit for doing the right thing.
February 17, 2016 at 12:12 PM
We can do better than that - we can nominate them for one of Charlie's brand new ethics awards. -
2/17/2016 3:04 PM
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Anonymous said...
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I believe it detected my stomach rumbling.
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2/17/2016 7:01 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Apparently there was some early modeling at LANL that helped pin down the expected signals. Nothing current, and nothing to justify inclusion of anyone in the author list.
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2/17/2016 8:39 PM
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Anonymous said...
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If our LANL colleagues did in fact predict through detailed simulations the possible existence of gravity waves (amplitudes and spectrum) then they should receive some credit. It would not be the first time that LLNL or LANL scientists where ahead of their time and got no credit from academia !
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2/17/2016 10:28 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Apparently there was some early modeling at LANL that helped pin down the expected signals. Nothing current, and nothing to justify inclusion of anyone in the author list.
February 17, 2016 at 8:39 PM
I do not think that is true either. -
2/18/2016 8:18 AM
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Anonymous said...
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If our LANL colleagues did in fact predict through detailed simulations the possible existence of gravity waves (amplitudes and spectrum) then they should receive some credit. It would not be the first time that LLNL or LANL scientists where ahead of their time and got no credit from academia !
February 17, 2016 at 10:28 PM
The press release has now been removed. -
2/18/2016 8:19 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Initial press release:
said Charlie McMillan, Los Alamos National Laboratory director. “This type of crosscutting capability is a hallmark of the national laboratory system and Los Alamos is gratified to have participated in a discovery of this magnitude.”
Updated press release:
said Charlie McMillan, Los Alamos National Laboratory director. “This type of bu11shitting capability is a hallmark of the national laboratory system and Los Alamos is gratified to have participated in a diversion of this magnitude." -
2/18/2016 9:33 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Once upon a time LASL was THE premier scientific institution on the planet. Apparently now we cannot even make the top 800. Thanks LANS, Thanks DOE. You have much to be proud of.
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2/19/2016 1:12 AM
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Anonymous said...
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Once upon a time LASL was THE premier scientific institution on the planet. Apparently now we cannot even make the top 800. Thanks LANS, Thanks DOE. You have much to be proud of.
February 19, 2016 at 1:12 AM
LANL and LLNL for some time have been splitting of from the rest of the scientific world. One might think to carry out the mission that LLNL and LANL would need to stay connected to the latest scientific work and be part of creating it but now it is about closing ranks and disappearing into the murk of the lowest form of mediocrity and accelerated decay. This is not how we won the cold war but it is how we we will lose the future. -
2/22/2016 5:47 PM
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Anonymous said...
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"now it is about closing ranks and disappearing into the murk of the lowest form of mediocrity and accelerated decay. This is not how we won the cold war but it is how we we will lose the future."
Hard to believe, however LLNL and/or LANL are not part of the DOE's 10 year plan for Fusion Energy, see
http://fire.pppl.gov/FES_10Year_Perspective_2015.pdf
I guess that the weapons work is pretty much it.
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2/22/2016 8:13 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Despite the many critics, the 2000-2012 vision at LLNL that ignition via ICF on NIF would drive the future of LLNL was not misplaced. No ignition, no bright future. Am I mistaken ?
What projects will grow LLNL and LANL ? -
2/22/2016 8:19 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Hard to believe, however LLNL and/or LANL are not part of the DOE's 10 year plan for Fusion Energy...I guess that the weapons work is pretty much it.
February 22, 2016 at 8:13 PM
Of course it is. Pie-in-the-sky, "it's only 20 years away" for the past 50 years, vs what's needed for US national security. Why are you working at LLNL? Try Rochester. -
2/22/2016 8:49 PM
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Anonymous said...
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5:47 nailed it.
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2/23/2016 1:07 PM
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Anonymous said...
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What you want is a new mission. What you have is an old mission.
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2/24/2016 10:26 PM
http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2016/February/02.11-gravitational-waves.php
Gravitational waves found, black-hole models led the way
Working with experts in radiation transport and atomic physics in the Advanced Simulation and Computing program at Los Alamos, members of the theoretical astrophysics center are modeling this emission to compare theoretical models with direct observations,” said Charlie McMillan, Los Alamos National Laboratory director. “This type of crosscutting capability is a hallmark of the national laboratory system and Los Alamos is gratified to have participated in a discovery of this magnitude.”
Indeed, however such a black hole collision model simulation was not done at LANL, so why would Charlie come out and say/imply this?
I don't think that is correct either. If someone at LANL really is part of LIGO or you know someone at LANL who is part of LIGO than maybe they could clear this up. I just do not see how Charlie could have claimed that LANL was a participant in this
discovery. The paper came out with the announcement on Feb 11 and is open for anyone to read is https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102 and the authors have 133 institutions and Los Alamos is not listed as an affiliation by any of the authors.
Just from reading the paper the simulation models of black hole mergers they specially compared the detection to are from the two following papers which have no association or connection with LANL that I know of.
Remnant mass, spin, and recoil from spin aligned black-hole binaries
J. Healy, C. O. Lousto, and Y. Zlochower, Phys. Rev. D 90, 104004 (2014).
Frequency-domain gravitational waves from nonprecessing black-hole binaries. I. New numerical waveforms and anatomy of the signal
S. Husa, S. Khan, M. Hannam, M. Pürrer, F. Ohme, X. Jiménez Forteza, and A. Bohé, Phys. Rev. D 93, 044006 (2016).
The other modeling work is that is cited in the again is not connected to LANL again as far as I can tell
Evolution of Binary Black-Hole Spacetimes
Frans Pretorius
Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 121101 2005
Accurate Evolutions of Orbiting Black-Hole Binaries without Excision
M. Campanelli, C. O. Lousto, P. Marronetti, and Y. Zlochower
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 111101 2006
Gravitational-Wave Extraction from an Inspiraling Configuration of Merging Black Holes John G. Baker, Joan Centrella, Dae-Il Choi, Michael Koppitz, and James van Meter Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 111102 2006
So can someone please explain how LANL participated in the LIGO discovery or how LANL models "led the way". If not Charlie might have some splainin to do.
I would think you can only claim your institute participated in the work if someone from your institute was an one of author. Since no one from Los Alamos was among the up to 800 authors on this paper Los Alamos cannot make the claim it was participant in this work and it is insult to the institutions that where participating.
February 14, 2016 at 10:46 PM
I think LANL needs to make a retraction on this claim. Perhaps it was some honest mistake at the press office, however what I am confused about is why no one vetted this before it went out.