Title
Reproducing GW150914: The First Observation of Gravitational Waves From a Binary Black Hole Merger
Abstract
In 2016, LIGO and Virgo announced the first observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, known as GW150914. To establish the confidence of this detection, large-scale scientific workflows were used to measure the event's statistical significance. They used code written by the LIGO/Virgo and were executed on the LIGO Data Grid. The codes are publicly available, but there has not yet been an attempt to directly reproduce the results, although several analyses have replicated the analysis, confirming the detection. We attempt to reproduce the result presented in the GW150914 discovery paper using publicly available code on the Open Science Grid. We show that we can reproduce the main result but we cannot exactly reproduce the LIGO analysis as the original dataset used is not public. We discuss the challenges we encountered and make recommendations for scientists who wish to make their work reproducible.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1109/MCSE.2021.3059232
Computing in Science & Engineering
Keywords
DocType
Volume
GW150914 discovery paper,publicly available code,LIGO analysis,work reproducible,Reproducing GW150914,gravitational waves,binary black hole merger,large-scale scientific workflows,event,LIGO Data Grid
Journal
23
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
1521-9615
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.41
1
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Duncan A. Brown112.44
Karan Vahi22045139.80
michela taufer335253.04
Von Welch410.41
Ewa Deelman55948420.48