Ravens or Black Holes Colliding: A Sensory History of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Environment

• In Event: Sound, Labor and Environmental History

Abstract

Scientists and historians of science typically define the laboratory as a space in which scientists can manipulate and control nature to derive knowledge about physical phenomena. Within these spaces, the mitigation of laboratory noise has become routinized, and often through practices that occur inside the laboratory space. However, as experiments become increasingly precise, the origin of noise moves further away from the laboratory and its boundaries. An example of this is the most sensitive instrument currently in operation, the large interferometer, used to detect gravitational waves. From the inception of gravitational wave detection in the late-1960s, an understanding of how natural and anthropogenic noise appeared in the laser interferometers was required in order to develop the sensitivity needed to detect minute length deformations caused by gravitational waves. An array of environmental monitors including gravimeters and seismometers provided cursory clues to identify the origin of the noise and remedy its effect on the instrument. Often the physicists had to sonify their output data to discern and find the origin of the noise within the environment surrounding their laboratories. Only when the physicists learned to understand the natural and anthropogenic noises of their surrounding environment, were they able to address its manifestations in the laboratory and improve the sensitivity of the laser interferometer. This paper explores the labor practices of sonification of the effects of noise within interferometers, including physicists’ searches of the surrounding natural and built environment–similar to field scientists–to understand and identify the sources of the noise and mitigate its effects on the experiment.

Author

• Tiffany Nichols, Princeton University