Article ID: CBB609802811

Hidden in Plain Sight: Discerning Signal from Noise in the Expanded Laboratory Environment (2024)

unapi

What happens when disturbances in precision measurement instruments are indecipherable to physicists despite extensive review of the instruments and their outputs? How do physicists parse instrument outputs to discern sought-after signals from noise that originates from the surrounding natural and built environments, either masking or mimicking these desired signals? I argue that given the extreme sensitivity of the laser interferometers used by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) to detect minute length deformations caused by gravitational waves, physicists reconceptualized their traditional laboratory spaces to include the surrounding natural and built environments. Discerning signal from noise in instruments operating close to their low noise floors necessitate an epistemic shift that combines the laboratory with the surrounding natural and built environments beyond its walls through the epistemic space of the “expanded laboratory environment.”

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Authors & Contributors
Collins, Harry M.
Rana, Adele La
Buchwald, Diana Kormos
Buchwald, Jed Z.
Davis, John
Doing, Park A.
Journals
European Physical Journal H
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
Rittenhouse: Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise
Acta Baltica historiae et philosophiae scientiarum
Historical Records of Australian Science
Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences
Publishers
Pavia University Press
Harvard University
MIT Press
Princeton University Press
University of Chicago Press
Concepts
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Physics
Interferometers
Gravitational waves
Laboratories
Gravitation
People
Einstein, Albert
Weber, Joseph
Brown, Robert Hanbury
Christiansen, Wilbur Norman
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von
Maxwell, James Clerk
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
Enlightenment
Places
Australia
Italy
Russia
United States
Institutions
Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO)
Clark University
Cornell University
Universität Tartu
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