[privong]

> If you're getting 10 events/second with a device like this, you probably overpaid for sensitivity

Aside from issues processing and disentangling the overlapping events in a situation with that high of an event rate, more events would not be bad, so I'm not sure I'd call it "overpaying". Imagine the kind of population demographics that could be built up if we were detecting that many events.

[specialp]

Keep in mind that when LIGO was built at tremendous expense, gravitational waves were never conclusively detected, and just to get to this sensitivity it was a feat of engineering. It was unknown how long it would be or if they would ever detect a wave.

Just detecting the initial wave was one of the most important measurements in the history of physics. Now that we know that gravitational waves exist, and can give us great insight into the mysteries of the universe, there will be more efforts to detect waves at smaller amplitudes and different frequencies. That is one reason the eLISA project is going on [1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...

[privong]

I'm aware of the context for the GW detections and the expense, etc. I was making a general philosophical point about "overpaid", not commenting specifically on the LIGO cost-benefit analysis.

[yodon]

It's not that physicists wouldn't love to capture all those events, it's that the cost of building instruments like LIGO is nearly prohibitively high and the cost is a strong function of the sensitivity of the instrument. If you aim too high in your sensitivity aspirations, the cost hits a point where the experiment simply can't be funded.

[privong]

> If you aim too high in your sensitivity aspirations, the cost hits a point where the experiment simply can't be funded.

Agreed. I misunderstood your meaning then; I'd interpreted your wording to mean that "overpaid" was still within the bounds of reasonable expectations for funding. "Overpaid" didn't imply "too expensive to build", to me.

[davrosthedalek]

It also might not be possible to build the system more sensitive. Took them, what, 30 years or so, to get to this sensitivity.

[eanzenberg]

It's a balance between cost and sensitivity, and remember that 1 discovery would prove the experiment a "success". I think the way it was planned and executed was great. Also, I think the proof that gravitational waves is far more exciting than comparing gravity wave signatures among a sample of celestial collisions.

[dwaltrip]

This is sort of like saying that "proving that stars emit light" is more exciting than using better and better telescopes to compare electromagnetic wave signatures of different light emitting celestial objects.

We will likely learn a great many things over the coming decades with this new way of looking at the universe, many of which we couldn't have even guessed we would learn!