Naturally, as anyone who does research on gravity can tell you, a
rather high-profile effort these days is the search for gravitational
waves at a number of well-respected institutions, including Caltech,
MIT, and other facilities around the world, using detectors based on
special Michelson-Morley interferometers; special in the sense that
they are extremely large (several miles in length, along each arm of
any given interferometer), with state-of-the-art equipment, boasting
of cutting-edge sensativity. [For details, do a Google search using
the following key words; LIGO, IGEC, GEO, and/or TAMA.]

Unfortunately, while billions of dollars are being spent in various
countries, and despite the fact that the first interferometer-type
gravitational-wave detector has been in operation for almost 12 years
now (with many others having been built and used continuously since
then), no gravitational waves have been detected as of this writing;
July, 2006.

The researchers directly engaged in the effort, and others who have
vested interests in detecting gravitational waves, of course, keep
predicting that the waves will be detected someday soon [where the
soonest estimate to-date claims that it will be within the next 18
months, or thereabouts (while others are saying it will be no sooner
than 4 years away)]. And with so much money and so many reputations
at stake, you can't blame them for leaning on, let us say, the
optimistic side of at least one paramount issue; whether or not they
have adopted the correct theoretical conceptualization on which to
base the design and calibration of the said equipment.

For my part, I expect that they may indeed eventually detect the
waves, but that they will not find them where (in the frequency or
wavelength ranges) nor maybe even in the manner (at the velocity) in
which they thought, based on the premise that they are calibrating
their instruments in accordance with implications of the standard
model of gravity; i.e., Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR)
in its Riemannian geometric formulation, to which is added a quantum
mechanical model in the form of a quadrupole field of spin-2 massless
bosons, the well-known "gravitons" (taken in analogy to the photons
of electromagnetism).

According to my thesis on tachyonic gravity, in which the Riemannian
formulation is retained, but the spin-2 graviton model is replaced by
a spin-0 tachyon model, I predict that gravitational waves will be
detected only if the searchers recalibrate their instruments to start
looking for the waves predicted by the Riemannian formulation at
speeds other than lightspeed, both slower and faster - because the
Riemannian formulation does not need the spin-2 graviton model to
account for the production of gravitational waves [since the waves
are associated with distortions of the fabric of space, not with the
propagation through space of photons or of any other massless quanta
(restricted to traveling only at lightspeed)].

[To review my thesis, click-on "Tachyonic Gravity" at
www.TachyonicsSociety.com.]

Now, notice that certain astronomers would have us believe that the
speed of gravitational waves must be lightspeed, because this fits
with certain "calculations" they perform using the data collected
from the detection of electomagnetic radiation from one of the same
sources of gravitational waves at which the above researchers are
focusing their attention; the binary pulsar systems that appear to be
losing rotational energy, and for which, it is said, the energy is
lost in the form of gravitational radiation.

A famous example is the binary system named PSR 1913+16, discovered
by astronomers Russel Hulse and Joseph Taylor in 1974, and for which
discovery they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993.

So, you would think that these guys are thrilled at the prospect of
the detection of gravitational waves, if detection is accomplished
using the parameters obtained from applying the spin-2 graviton
model, since that will reinforce their long-standing assertion that
their own research has already proven that the spin-2 graviton model
is experimentally correct (in which case, gravity is not tachyonic).

However, if gravitational wave detectors indicate parameters other
than those obtained from the spin-2 graviton model, then yet other
quantum mechanical models, such as the tachyon model I have proposed,
must be considered. And, in that case, decades of claims that have
been made by otherwise well-respected researchers, and thus accepted
as "scientific fact" by many others, will suddenly be proven wrong.

It remains to be seen, therefore, what the researchers engaged in the
direct search for gravitational waves are going to do, if they find
eventually that their instruments are providing them with data that
is not in conformity with the mainstream view of gravity (i.e., that
which involves, as sacrosanct, the spin-2 graviton model).

For many years now, I have been saying that gravity is faster than
light, and is therefore a tachyonic force. I expect, then, that the
search for gravitational waves will someday prove it.

Indeed, I am so confident in such an outcome that I would suggest
that the search for gravitational waves will bear fruit much sooner
[though in favor of the tachyon model (and necessarily in opposition
to the graviton model)] if the said researchers recalibrate their
instruments (even only temporarily) so as to test this possibility
(and as long as the test is conducted in an open and honest fashion).

Otherwise, and ironically, I am of the opinion that the scientific
community will be quilty of perpetrating a fraud upon itself.