Star crushing: Theoretical practice and the theoreticians' regress

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 5-40

  Kennefick, Daniel ^a  

^a CARDIFF UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Computing; Controversy; Physics; Replication; Tacit knowledge

Indexed keywords

EID: 0034132485     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631200030001001     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. See, for example, H.M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London: Sage, 1985), and Peter Galison, How Experiments End (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
2. See, for example, H.M. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London: Sage, 1985), and Peter Galison, How Experiments End (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
3. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
4. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
5. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
6. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
7. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
8. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
9. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
10. Examples include Donald MacKenzie, 'The Automation of Proof: A Historical and Sociological Exploration', IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1995), 7-29; MacKenzie, 'Proof and the Computer: Some Issues Raised by the Formal Verification of Computer Systems', Science and Public Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 1996), 45-53; Trevor Pinch, 'What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove?', in Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart and Richard Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook No. 1 (Dordrecht, London & Boston, MA: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; Andrew Warwick, 'Cambridge Mathematics and Cavendish Physics: Cunningham, Campbell and Einstein Relativity 1905-11, Part I: The Uses of Theory', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23, No. 4 (December 1992), 625-56; Warwick, 'Part II: Comparing Traditions in Cambridge Physics', ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1 (March 1993), 1-25; Warwick, 'On the Role of the Fitzgerald-Lorentz Contraction Hypothesis in the Development of the Larmor Electronic Theory of Matter', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Vol. 43 (1991), 29-91; Andrew Pickering, Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Pickering, The Mangle of Practice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).
11. Collins, op. cit. note 1, 79-106; for a more popular summary, see Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 97-98.
12. Collins, op. cit. note 1, 79-106; for a more popular summary, see Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. 97-98.
13. H.M. Collins, 'The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the Replication of Experiments in Physics', Sociology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May 1975), 205-24; Collins, 'Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11, No. 1 (February 1981), 33-63.
14. H.M. Collins, 'The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the Replication of Experiments in Physics', Sociology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May 1975), 205-24; Collins, 'Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11, No. 1 (February 1981), 33-63.
15. H.M. Collins, 'Tantalus and the Aliens: Publications, Audiences and the Search for Gravitational Waves', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 1999), 163-97.
16. Larger experiments in particle physics and related disciplines have been funded in the USA by the Department of Energy.
17. In general relativity, the gravitational field produced by massive objects is pictured as curvature induced in the fabric of the so-called 'spacetime continuum'.
18. The frequency is of great importance because the constant 'noise' of seismic vibrations in the earth's crust will prevent any of the proposed earth-based detectors from observing gravitational waves below somewhere in the region of 10Hz.
19. A parsec is an astronomical unit of distance a little greater than 3 light years. One megaparsec is a million of these units. A sphere of 200 megaparsecs radius centred on the earth is big enough to contain several large clusters of galaxies.
20. Such a signal, characterized by increasing pitch and strength, is known as a 'chirp'.
21. Not surprisingly, experts disagree on whether these recent claims, if true, really pose a threat to matched-filtering methods. However, several of those theorists who published counter-arguments to these claims were motivated by a concern that this might be the case: see, for example, Éanna É. Flanagan, 'General Relativistic Coupling between Orbital Motion and Internal Degrees of Freedom for Inspiraling Binary Neutron Stars', Physical Review D, Vol. 58, No. 12 (15 December 1998), 124030-1 to -19.
22. Ibid.
23. 8. Suppose the value of the expansion parameter is v = 0.01. Then the series reduces to 1 + 0.0004 + 0.00000022 + 0.000000000007 + 0.0000000000000016. It is obvious that retaining only the first two terms and discarding the rest results in an error of less than 3 parts in 10 million. If v was a post-Newtonian parameter, we would say that we had kept terms up to first-post-Newtonian order (two powers of the expansion parameter). Supposing the next step in the calculation had entailed taking the square of the quantity expressed by this series, then keeping only the first two terms and discarding the next three would reduce the number of terms to be gathered in the new series from 25 to 4, a considerable saving in effort. Keep in mind that the number of terms in a typical post-Newtonian expansion is infinite, so even the calculating speed of a computer does not suffice to make a post-Newtonian approach arbitrarily accurate. There is no way to 'keep all the terms' and exactly solve relativistic problems exhaustively using post-Newtonian methods. Numerical relativity makes use of methods which are conceptually very different.
24. The computational grand challenge initiative is a US government programme designed to encourage large-scale cross-disciplinary collaborative efforts to solve important outstanding problems in a number of scientific fields, using modern supercomputers.
25. Many people have observed that numerical physics has much in common with experimental work. In a recent book, Peter Galison includes numerical simulations of hydrogen bombs in a study of the impact of technology on modern experimental physics: see P. Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 689-780. Obviously, I agree with the parallels Galison and others have drawn between numerical and experimental work in physics. But to be clear, for the purposes of this paper, I regard numerical relativists as firmly part of the theoretical community. Many numerical relativists do analytical work (or were trained in that tradition), and they generally operate, in their departments or at meetings and conferences, in close physical proximity to other theorists. Indeed many people active in numerical relativity were trained in the most mathematical traditions of relativity. They regard themselves, and are regarded by other physicists, as theorists.
26. One way of seeing part of how the SCF assumption works is to imagine that it introduces a fictitious set of waves into the simulation, which impinge on the binary, and which behave just so as to interfere with and cancel out the 'real' waves coming from the binary. By estimating the very small amount of extra energy and mass (relative to the total mass of the system) introduced by these fictitious waves into their simulation, Wilson and Mathews convinced themselves that errors associated with the assumption must be small.
27. J.R. Wilson and G.J. Mathews, 'Instabilities in Close Neutron Star Binaries', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 75, No. 23 (4 December 1995), 4161-64; Wilson, Mathews and Pedro Marronetti, 'Relativistic Numerical Model for Close Neutron Star Binaries', Physical Review D, Vol. 54, No. 2 (15 July 1996), 1317-31.
28. J.R. Wilson and G.J. Mathews, 'Instabilities in Close Neutron Star Binaries', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 75, No. 23 (4 December 1995), 4161-64; Wilson, Mathews and Pedro Marronetti, 'Relativistic Numerical Model for Close Neutron Star Binaries', Physical Review D, Vol. 54, No. 2 (15 July 1996), 1317-31.
29. Dong Lai, Frederic A. Rasio and Stuart L. Shapiro, 'Ellipsoidal Figures of Equilibrium: Compressible Models', Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 88 (September 1993), 205-52.
30. Dong Lai, 'Tidal Stabilization of Neutron Stars and White Dwarfs', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 76, No. 26 (24 June 1996), 4878-81.
31. Thomas W. Baumgarte, Gregory B. Cook, Mark A. Scheel, Stuart L. Shapiro and Saul A. Teukolsky, 'Binary Neutron Stars in General Relativity: Quasiequilibrium Models', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 79, No. 7 (18 August 1997), 1182-85; Baumgarte, Cook, Scheel, Shapiro and Teukolsky, 'General Relativistic Models of Binary Neutron Stars in Quasiequilibrium', Physical Review D, Vol. 57, No. 12 (15 June 1998), 7299-311. Rigid co-rotation can be observed in the way the Moon presents only one face to the Earth, having been locked into such a rotation by the Earth's tidal forces. This assumption greatly simplifies the modelling of the hydrodynamics of the neutron-star binary system.
32. Thomas W. Baumgarte, Gregory B. Cook, Mark A. Scheel, Stuart L. Shapiro and Saul A. Teukolsky, 'Binary Neutron Stars in General Relativity: Quasiequilibrium Models', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 79, No. 7 (18 August 1997), 1182-85; Baumgarte, Cook, Scheel, Shapiro and Teukolsky, 'General Relativistic Models of Binary Neutron Stars in Quasiequilibrium', Physical Review D, Vol. 57, No. 12 (15 June 1998), 7299-311. Rigid co-rotation can be observed in the way the Moon presents only one face to the Earth, having been locked into such a rotation by the Earth's tidal forces. This assumption greatly simplifies the modelling of the hydrodynamics of the neutron-star binary system.
33. G.J. Mathews, P. Marronetti and J.R. Wilson, 'Relativistic Hydrodynamics in Close Binary Systems: Analysis of Neutron-Star Collapse', Physical Review D, Vol. 58, No. 4 (15 August 1998), 3003-15.
34. Members of the Illinois/Cornell group had previously published a (Newtonian order) calculation showing that neutron stars would be stabilized within a binary system. As this result was contradicted by Wilson and Mathews' findings, it is not surprising that members of this group published several papers in response to the star-crushing effect. At the same time, they were favourably inclined towards the use of the SCF assumption in this problem, and their earliest response to Wilson and Mathews was a paper which tested this approximation in simple cases, reporting the results as 'very encouraging': G.B. Cook, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'Testing a Simplified Version of Einstein's Equations for Numerical Relativity', Physical Review D, Vol. 53, No. 10 (15 May 1996), 5533-40, at 5533. The Cornell/Illinois group also acted to strengthen its argument based on numerical results, by presenting an analytic study of the stability of its neutron-star binary model which showed that the configurations were stable against collapse to black holes: T.W. Baumgarte, G.B. Cook, M.A. Scheel, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'The Stability of Relativistic Neutron Stars in Binary Orbit', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 10 (15 May 1998), 6181-84. On the other hand, one prominent member of the group also published a paper which suggested that something not unlike the crushing effect could exist in at least one 'trivial example': Stuart L. Shapiro, 'Binary-Induced Gravitational Collapse: A Trivial Example', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 2 (15 January 1998), 908-13. This left open the possibility that something like the crushing effect might occur in the collapse of stellar clusters, a case of no relevance to the detection of gravitational waves. They have continued to publish the results of more sophisticated simulations, failing to find the effect in the case of individual stars in a binary: Masaru Shibata, T.W. Baumgarte and S.L. Shapiro, 'Stability of Coalescing Binary Stars against Gravitational Collapse: Hydrodynamical Simulations', ibid., Vol. 58, No. 2 (15 July 1998), 023002-1 to -11.
35. Members of the Illinois/Cornell group had previously published a (Newtonian order) calculation showing that neutron stars would be stabilized within a binary system. As this result was contradicted by Wilson and Mathews' findings, it is not surprising that members of this group published several papers in response to the star-crushing effect. At the same time, they were favourably inclined towards the use of the SCF assumption in this problem, and their earliest response to Wilson and Mathews was a paper which tested this approximation in simple cases, reporting the results as 'very encouraging': G.B. Cook, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'Testing a Simplified Version of Einstein's Equations for Numerical Relativity', Physical Review D, Vol. 53, No. 10 (15 May 1996), 5533-40, at 5533. The Cornell/Illinois group also acted to strengthen its argument based on numerical results, by presenting an analytic study of the stability of its neutron-star binary model which showed that the configurations were stable against collapse to black holes: T.W. Baumgarte, G.B. Cook, M.A. Scheel, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'The Stability of Relativistic Neutron Stars in Binary Orbit', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 10 (15 May 1998), 6181-84. On the other hand, one prominent member of the group also published a paper which suggested that something not unlike the crushing effect could exist in at least one 'trivial example': Stuart L. Shapiro, 'Binary-Induced Gravitational Collapse: A Trivial Example', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 2 (15 January 1998), 908-13. This left open the possibility that something like the crushing effect might occur in the collapse of stellar clusters, a case of no relevance to the detection of gravitational waves. They have continued to publish the results of more sophisticated simulations, failing to find the effect in the case of individual stars in a binary: Masaru Shibata, T.W. Baumgarte and S.L. Shapiro, 'Stability of Coalescing Binary Stars against Gravitational Collapse: Hydrodynamical Simulations', ibid., Vol. 58, No. 2 (15 July 1998), 023002-1 to -11.
36. Members of the Illinois/Cornell group had previously published a (Newtonian order) calculation showing that neutron stars would be stabilized within a binary system. As this result was contradicted by Wilson and Mathews' findings, it is not surprising that members of this group published several papers in response to the star-crushing effect. At the same time, they were favourably inclined towards the use of the SCF assumption in this problem, and their earliest response to Wilson and Mathews was a paper which tested this approximation in simple cases, reporting the results as 'very encouraging': G.B. Cook, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'Testing a Simplified Version of Einstein's Equations for Numerical Relativity', Physical Review D, Vol. 53, No. 10 (15 May 1996), 5533-40, at 5533. The Cornell/Illinois group also acted to strengthen its argument based on numerical results, by presenting an analytic study of the stability of its neutron-star binary model which showed that the configurations were stable against collapse to black holes: T.W. Baumgarte, G.B. Cook, M.A. Scheel, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'The Stability of Relativistic Neutron Stars in Binary Orbit', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 10 (15 May 1998), 6181-84. On the other hand, one prominent member of the group also published a paper which suggested that something not unlike the crushing effect could exist in at least one 'trivial example': Stuart L. Shapiro, 'Binary-Induced Gravitational Collapse: A Trivial Example', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 2 (15 January 1998), 908-13. This left open the possibility that something like the crushing effect might occur in the collapse of stellar clusters, a case of no relevance to the detection of gravitational waves. They have continued to publish the results of more sophisticated simulations, failing to find the effect in the case of individual stars in a binary: Masaru Shibata, T.W. Baumgarte and S.L. Shapiro, 'Stability of Coalescing Binary Stars against Gravitational Collapse: Hydrodynamical Simulations', ibid., Vol. 58, No. 2 (15 July 1998), 023002-1 to -11.
37. Members of the Illinois/Cornell group had previously published a (Newtonian order) calculation showing that neutron stars would be stabilized within a binary system. As this result was contradicted by Wilson and Mathews' findings, it is not surprising that members of this group published several papers in response to the star-crushing effect. At the same time, they were favourably inclined towards the use of the SCF assumption in this problem, and their earliest response to Wilson and Mathews was a paper which tested this approximation in simple cases, reporting the results as 'very encouraging': G.B. Cook, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'Testing a Simplified Version of Einstein's Equations for Numerical Relativity', Physical Review D, Vol. 53, No. 10 (15 May 1996), 5533-40, at 5533. The Cornell/Illinois group also acted to strengthen its argument based on numerical results, by presenting an analytic study of the stability of its neutron-star binary model which showed that the configurations were stable against collapse to black holes: T.W. Baumgarte, G.B. Cook, M.A. Scheel, S.L. Shapiro and S.A. Teukolsky, 'The Stability of Relativistic Neutron Stars in Binary Orbit', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 10 (15 May 1998), 6181-84. On the other hand, one prominent member of the group also published a paper which suggested that something not unlike the crushing effect could exist in at least one 'trivial example': Stuart L. Shapiro, 'Binary-Induced Gravitational Collapse: A Trivial Example', ibid., Vol. 57, No. 2 (15 January 1998), 908-13. This left open the possibility that something like the crushing effect might occur in the collapse of stellar clusters, a case of no relevance to the detection of gravitational waves. They have continued to publish the results of more sophisticated simulations, failing to find the effect in the case of individual stars in a binary: Masaru Shibata, T.W. Baumgarte and S.L. Shapiro, 'Stability of Coalescing Binary Stars against Gravitational Collapse: Hydrodynamical Simulations', ibid., Vol. 58, No. 2 (15 July 1998), 023002-1 to -11.
38. Such limiting cases could include slow-motion, weak field cases amenable to post-Newtonian analysis, or cases where one of the stars was much more massive than the other, amenable to perturbation techniques: see Alan G. Wiseman, 'The Central Density of Neutron Stars in Close Binaries', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 79, No. 7 (18 August 1997), 1189-92; Patrick R. Brady and Scott A. Hughes, 'The Central Density of a Neutron Star is Unaffected by a Binary Companion at Linear Order in μ/R', ibid., 1186-88.
39. Such limiting cases could include slow-motion, weak field cases amenable to post-Newtonian analysis, or cases where one of the stars was much more massive than the other, amenable to perturbation techniques: see Alan G. Wiseman, 'The Central Density of Neutron Stars in Close Binaries', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 79, No. 7 (18 August 1997), 1189-92; Patrick R. Brady and Scott A. Hughes, 'The Central Density of a Neutron Star is Unaffected by a Binary Companion at Linear Order in μ/R', ibid., 1186-88.
40. Kip S. Thorne, 'Tidal Stabilization of Rigidly Rotating, Fully Relativistic Neutron Stars', Physical Review D, Vol. 58, No. 12 (15 December 1998), 124031-1 to -9; Flanagan, op. cit. note 11.
41. Kip S. Thorne, 'Tidal Stabilization of Rigidly Rotating, Fully Relativistic Neutron Stars', Physical Review D, Vol. 58, No. 12 (15 December 1998), 124031-1 to -9; Flanagan, op. cit. note 11.
42. G.J. Mathews and J.R. Wilson, 'Binary-Induced Neutron Star Compression, Heating and Collapse', Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 482, No. 2 (20 June 1997), 929-41, appendix at 940-41.
43. Wiseman, op. cit. note 23.
44. Mathews & Wilson, op. cit. note 25, 930.
45. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Milton Keynes, Bucks.: Open University Press, 1987), 30-44.
46. Brady & Hughes, op. cit. note 23; Éanna É. Flanagan, 'Possible Explanation for Star-Crushing Effect in Binary Neutron Star Simulations', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 82, No. 7 (15 February 1999), 1354-57.
47. Brady & Hughes, op. cit. note 23; Éanna É. Flanagan, 'Possible Explanation for Star-Crushing Effect in Binary Neutron Star Simulations', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 82, No. 7 (15 February 1999), 1354-57.
48. I have heard this incident referred to as the 'Tuesday Night Massacre', among other epithets. The fact that three papers from two different groups were submitted to GR-QC on the same night was not the result of a coordinated plan to present a grand-slam rebuttal to the claims of Wilson and Mathews, but rather the consequence of competition between the two groups involved to be first to appear in e-print with their responses.
49. Mathews, Marronetti & Wilson, op. cit. note 21.
50. Latour has commented both on the importance of seeking allies and on the tendency to produce increasingly technical papers when a scientist is embroiled in controversy: Latour, op. cit. note 28, 30-44. Here we see that these two strategies sometimes cannot be easily reconciled!
51. Galison, op. cit. note 15, 831-36.
52. Collins, op. cit. note 5, 163-66.
53. Quote taken from photocopies made of the transparencies used during presentations at the Aspen meeting. These photocopies were distributed to participants after the meeting.
54. Trevor Pinch, Confronting Nature: The Sociology of Solar-Neutrino Detection (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), 156-95.
55. See the discussion of texts which act as 'political markers' in Collins, op. cit. note 5, 187. Scientific papers can influence many more people than those who actually read them.
56. See Galison, op. cit. note 15, 689-780, and MacKenzie (1995 & 1996), op. cit. note 3;
57. See Galison, op. cit. note 15, 689-780, and MacKenzie (1995 & 1996), op. cit. note 3;
58. see also Donald MacKenzie, 'Slaying the Kraken: The Sociohistory of a Mathematical Proof', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 1 (February 1999), 7-60, at 8 & passim.
59. David Gooding, Experiment and the Making of Meaning (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), 212.
60. Mathews, Marronetti & Wilson, op. cit. note 21, 3003.
61. The influence of 'social capital' on controversies is a major theme of Pinch, op. cit. note 2.
62. The Caltech and Cornell/Illinois groups have a close family history. In recent years they have exchanged young researchers (students and postdocs) a number of times.
63. See also Thorne's remarks in interview in Collins, op. cit. note 5, 185-86.
64. Flanagan, op. cit. note 29.
65. Again based on preliminary reports to me, it may be that the corrected Wilson and Mathews code will appear less 'bad' for standard signal-analysis techniques by changing the frequency sweep of the signal previously predicted by Wilson and Mathews, which had seemed very different from the evolution predicted by most analytical techniques: see Dong Lai and Alan G. Wiseman, 'Innermost Stable Circular Orbit of Inspiraling Neutron-Star Binaries: Tidal Effects, Post-Newtonian Effects and the Neutron-Star Equation of State', Physical Review D, Vol. 54, No. 6 (15 September 1996), 3958-64. One of the worries which those at the 1997 Aspen conference expressed was that the Wilson and Mathews signal would not even spend enough time in the LIGO bandwidth for matched filtering to work. A reduction in strength of the star-crushing effect is also 'good' for signal analysis since it makes any collapse occur even later in the inspiral, so that less signal will be lost after it occurs. One can speculate that if the 'size' of Wilson and Mathews' effects is sufficiently reduced, the issue will cease to be critical for LIGO signal analysis, and will then remain alive only as an issue of principle to be settled by numerical simulations of neutron-star binaries.
66. Silvano Bonazzola, Eric Gourgoulhon and Jean-Alain Marck, 'Numerical Methods of Irrotational Binary Neutron Stars in General Relativity', Physical Review Letters, Vol. 82, No. 5 (1 February 1999), 892-95.
67. The theorist who uncovered Wilson and Mathews' error reports to me spending two or three months proving to his own satisfaction that the mistake was of significance, and not merely a typo or an inconsequential slip.
68. This closely parallels the pre-conditions without which any attempt to use a 'Science Court' to resolve a political dispute would likely be thwarted: see Barry Casper and Paul Wellstone, 'Science Court on Trial in Minnesota', in Barry Barnes and David Edge (eds), Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science (Milton Keynes, Bucks.: Open University Press, 1982), 282-89.
69. Some of those I spoke to felt that there might well be no unique solution to the Einstein equations with this constraint, so that different groups employing this assumption could actually be working on different problems without realizing it.
70. Not surprisingly, theorists also disagree about just how computationally intensive analysis of signals from binaries will be. One expert I interviewed, who was not one of the public critics of Wilson and Mathews, downplayed the difficulties of dealing with rival models for this reason. The critics, on the other hand, were nearly all motivated by a desire to investigate what they perceived to be a threat to proposed signal-analysis techniques such as matched filtering.
71. The question of what constitutes a successful filter could, of course, be confounded by the Experimenters' Regress: see Collins, op. cit. note 1, 79-106.
72. Pickering (1995), op. cit. note 2, 121.
73. This is a recurrent theme of the works by Warwick cited in note 2, but note especially his (1992), 631-34.
74. Daniel Kennefick, 'Controversies in the Development of Gravitational Radiation Reaction Theory', in Hubert Goenner, Jürgen Renn, James Ritter and Tilman Sauer (eds), The Expanding Worlds of General Relativity, Einstein Studies, Vol. 7 (Boston, MA: Birkhauser Verlag, 1999), 207-34.
75. Allan Franklin, 'How to Avoid the Experimenters' Regress', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 25, No. 3 (June 1994), 463-91.
76. H.M. Collins, 'A Strong Confirmation of the Experimenters' Regress', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 25, No. 3 (June 1994), 493-503.