That's not accurate. They were HOPING to be able to detect them, but the idea that they would definitely detect them in previous experiments is nonsense.
I'll agree as far as this. Gravity waves aren't completely excluded yet. They are simply to the level of 'unlikely' to be detected. Mathematically, the certainty is about 99% that waves should have been detected, but to exclude them reasonably, certainty must reach ~2x10^-7 that the results are accurate. I don't know the exact capabilities of LIGO when it relaunched its new version, but it will likely take 2-4 years to either discover gravity waves or exclude the theory.
As I understand it the sensitivity of the detector limits the range; for events outside that range that (theoretically) produce gravitational waves, those waves would not be detected.
Original sensitivity I read was calculated at 1 event/ year, and at some point it was upgraded to what you said (10 events per year). I never checked the exact numbers myself though. There's also a high variation in the sensitivity of the machine due to numerous factor in how ideal the conditions are. Since multiple machines are required, you can only go by the least sensitive of the group at the same time.
Hodj I'm not trying to be a shit here, but saying the orbits of something match our calculations seems shady to me, considering we can't figure out why galaxies and other very large bodies orbit the way they do so we have the dark matter fudge factor. I'm not saying gravity waves don't exist because I am pretty sure I have no fucking idea what they're supposed to be but before we fly off calling people stupid for being skeptical (I know we're talking about Furry here) I hope we have something more solid than that.
