Comments on: "Echoes from the abyss: Evidence for Planck-scale structure at black hole horizons"

TL;DR

This paper critically examines a recent claim of gravitational wave echoes indicating Planck-scale black hole horizon structure, highlighting methodological flaws and arguing that the evidence is not statistically significant.

Contribution

It provides a detailed critique of previous data analysis methods and emphasizes the need for corrected approaches to properly assess gravitational wave echo claims.

Findings

The claimed echo signals lack statistical significance upon reanalysis.

Methodological shortcomings undermine the original evidence for Planck-scale horizon structure.

The paper advocates for more rigorous analysis to verify or refute the echo hypothesis.

Abstract

Recently, Abedi, Dykaar and Afshordi claimed evidence for a repeating damped echo signal following the binary black hole merger gravitational-wave events recorded in the first observational period of the Advanced LIGO interferometers. We discuss the methods of data analysis and significance estimation leading to this claim, and identify several important shortcomings. We conclude that their analysis does not provide significant observational evidence for the existence of Planck-scale structure at black hole horizons, and suggest renewed analysis correcting for these shortcomings.