"I have failed to find dark matter, but I got a very pleasant consolation prize" | Hacker News Reader

"I have failed to find dark matter, but I got a very pleasant consolation prize"

nytimes.com

33 pointsdonohoe19 comments

The writer had fun with this paragraph. I know stories like these in the general press are ragged on often (rightfully), but seriously? Would a writer in the Politics or Business sections ever get something like the 2nd sentence past their editor?

The source of the bubbles is a mystery. One possibility is that they are fueled by a wave of star births and deaths at the center of the galaxy. Another option is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way. What it is apparently not is dark matter, the mysterious something that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the universe and holds galaxies together.

> A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

> ...known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way.

A lesson to all the mainstream writers out there: don't drop references if you can't get them right. :P

And I believe Luke says that Tatooine is nowhere near the center of its galaxy

Clearly the better reference was not Jabba the Hutt, but the maw of the Sarlacc.

So they have basically discovered The High Beyond.

Z-pinch!!!

See: http://plasmauniverse.info/downloadsCosmo/KukushkinKartinovC...

“Wow,” said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work.

Looks like an electromagnetic field. I wonder why they didn't make that connection.

That's funny. I didn't think of that, I immediately thought that it looked like an atomic p-orbital. Then again, I was a biochemistry major...

I couldn't help but think about Warhammer 40k's Astronomicon (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Astronomicon) since that's supposed to extend for about 50,0000 light years as well. Then again, I am a bit of a WH40k fan...

bah. please don't link to things behind a wall

use this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=136...

Thanks, I do know how to get access (I mean, I am sure I registered in the past anyway) but it's still trashy to click a link on a site like HN and be prompted with a login before you see the content.

The situation is that after 8 views (aprox) of articles you're asked to Register. You can always clear the NYT cookie or switch browsers or whatever.

it's an interesting point, that. should news aggregators consciously avoid paywalled articles, and if so, why? Do they increase the ratio of noise to signal her, because few people can benefit from them (hence they are pure noise to most people here)? That's quite the irony, since their entire selling point is that paywalled content is higher signal, lower noise.

Perhaps it comes down to the aggregator's audience. Some will be more willing to pay to get past paywalls, for articles recommended to them by that aggregator, or have a higher tendency to already be paying customers. Hence P(article recommendation will be appreciated) will tend higher there, because P(article will be viewable) is higher.

What wall?

Pay Wall =(

Appears to be available for free now.

Um. There is no pay wall... Not until next year anyway.

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