# n99 — LIGO and the audited vacuum: both directions (2026-07-10)

## What the theory predicts FOR LIGO — the scorecard
Every LIGO observable, the theory's entry, and its class:
- INSPIRAL -1PN (dipole) TERM: exactly zero, forever — the relaxational
  scalar cannot ring (n98). Every parameterized-test bound is a
  rolling confirmation.
- POLARIZATIONS: pure tensor, forever (no breathing/vector modes from
  the vacuum side).
- PROPAGATION SPEED: c_GW = c identically (one substrate).
- DISPERSION: quadratic-subluminal at E_QG2 > 4.6e10 GeV — at LIGO
  frequencies dv/c ~ 2e-66: indistinguishable from zero at any
  conceivable sensitivity; the graviton-mass entry is 0.
- LUMINOSITY DISTANCE: d_L(GW) = d_L(EM) exactly (transparency,
  (omega/gamma)^2 < 1.5e-24); standard sirens test this at every
  event with a counterpart.
- RINGDOWN/ECHOES: sector silent (no compact-interior model) — GR
  ringdown expected, no echoes predicted; an echo detection would not
  kill this framework but would not belong to it either.
- MIRROR FORCE NOISE — the sharp one: ZERO anomalous noise. The audit
  contributes (omega/gamma)^2 ~ 1e-24 (nothing), and there is no
  collapse floor. PREDICTION 18: LIGO's quantum-limited noise budget
  will always close with known physics. Collapse models (CSL/DP)
  predict anomalous force noise on macroscopic mirrors — LIGO and
  LISA Pathfinder data already carve their parameter space (Carlesso
  et al. 2016 lineage). Kill: a confirmed, unbudgeted broadband force
  noise on the test masses matching a collapse spectrum.

## What LIGO does FOR the theory
1. THE MACROSCOPIC NO-FLOOR TEST, RUNNING NOW: LIGO's 40-kg mirrors
   near their quantum ground state are the heaviest objects ever held
   in quantum-limited states. The audited vacuum says that is ALLOWED
   (rest states are dark states); collapse models say it costs noise.
   Every squeezing improvement and every closed noise budget is a
   vote — LIGO has been voting for violation-only monitoring for a
   decade without knowing it.
2. STANDARD SIRENS: each counterpart event tightens the transparency
   lock (d_L equality).
3. POLARIZATION/DIPOLE TESTS: each event re-tests the relaxational
   scalar.
4. WHAT LIGO CANNOT DO, said plainly: reach the knee. The knee lives
   at 1e19-1e22 s^-1 (soft X-ray at the electron anchor); LIGO's band
   is 1e1-1e4 Hz — seventeen orders below. LIGO tests the theory's
   NULL structure (what the vacuum does not do); the knee experiment
   tests its POSITIVE structure (what it does). Complementary, not
   substitutable.
5. CERTIFICATION, for free: the framework guarantees no fundamental
   obstacle to macroscopic mirror superpositions below the knee —
   the quantum-optomechanics program's ambition is, on this theory,
   unbounded from the vacuum side.

## One sentence
LIGO cannot hear the audit — but it has spent a decade proving the
audit's silence: perfect tensor waves, perfect transparency, perfectly
quiet mirrors; the theory's entry for every LIGO observable is "GR,
exactly, plus nothing" — and the one instrument that can catch the
vacuum in the act is not an interferometer at 100 Hz but a mass
modulated at X-ray rates.