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LIGO events and the Moon Position
There are several coincidences among these events.
4 GW events were nearly coincident with a new moon (within 2 days).
2 events nearly coincided with a full moon (within 2 days).
2 events nearly coincided with a perigee (within 1 day).
That is 8 out of 16.
2 other events were within 5 days of a perigee.
There was only one GW event that was not within 6 days of a moon event.
Wikipedia has a list of each GW event date and time
The event names have the format: GWyymmdd
where GW150914 event is on 2015-09-14.
Here are those dates and the nearest full or new moon: FM or NM or PG (Perigee)
Events phases within a few days?
GW150914 NM-15-09-13 1=close
GW151012 NM-15-10-12 0=match
GW151226 FM-15-12-25 1=close
GW170104 FM-16-12-13 22=no PG- 17-04-10 6=?
GW170608 FM-17-06-09 1=close
GW170729 NM-17-07-23 6=? PG-17-07-21 8=no
GW170809 FM-17-08-07 2=near
GW170814 FM-17-08-07 7=no PG-17-08-18 4=?
GW170817 NM-17-08-21 4=? PG-17-08-18 1=close
GW170818 NM-17-08-21 3=? PG-17-08-18 0=match
GW170823 NM-17-08-21 2=near
S190408 NM-19-04-05 3=? PG-17-08-18 10=no
S190412 NM-19-04-05 7=no PG-17-04-16 4=?
S190421 FM-19-04-05 6=no PG-17-04-16 5=?
S190425 FM-19-04-05 20=no PG-17-04-16 9=no
S190503 NM-19-05-04 1=close
difference of 0 days is a match, 1-2 is close, 3-6 is questionable, >6 is too far.
When I did this exercise I expected no frequent correlations between any moon positions and the gravitational wave events.
I am quite surprised by several coincidences.
A new moon puts maximum tidal stress on Earth's crust, with the Sun also aligned. A perigee also does an earth tide regardless of the Sun.
That is only 8 out of 16 with a possible connection, though a few others were within a few days of a moon event.
Only the event S190425 is not within 6 days of a moon event.
From Wikipedia:
'
Earth tide is the displacement of the solid earth's surface caused by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. Its main component has meter-level amplitude at periods of about 12 hours and longer.
'
With the Moon at such a distance I do not know how many days cover most of its significant crust distortion. Maybe it takes only a day or two to relax. I was surprised by its meter-level amplitude.
This observation is probably a random coincidence of dates.
I really can't argue if someone says you can always find some possible pattern between sets of numbers.
In any case, I find this observation interesting. I leave it to the reader to their interpretation.
I checked for these coincidences simply because LIGO was designed to detect any disturbance in Earth's crust from a theoretical gravitational wave. The Moon is known to disturb Earth's crust and oceans.
If this observation is valid: this is funny if LIGO did not always account for the lingering effects of the nearby moon.
This post replaces my post on May 8 on this topic where I neglected the perigee events.
I added this comment after posting.
'
Another coincidence: GW170104 had no close lunar event. That date had the perihelion. That was the only GW event in January.
'
I added one more comment:
'
I will add one more coincidence for closure.
S190425 was the only event in the list with no connection to a celestial event
On 2019-04-23 was an alignment separation of the Moon and Jupiter of only 1 degree, 38 minutes, at the same RA. These events have a difference of only 2 days.
This means all 16 GW events were within 6 days of a lunar or solar celestial event. Some events are probably too distant like Jupiter. I honestly don't know for certain if any of them could affect LIGO. However LIGO was designed be as sensitive as the technology allowed. Were these predictable events in our solar system considered in the template matching?
The list of observed coincidences is interesting to consider; which is why I posted this. Is this another possible reason to doubt whether the LIGO algorithm truly captured only the specific merger event that was widely publicized?
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