Astronomers discover thousands of red galaxy hearts with powerful radio signals | Hacker News Reader

Astronomers discover thousands of red galaxy hearts with powerful radio signals

space.com

68 pointsBrajeshwar23 comments

Anyone else feel like they read a ton of wild speculation presented as utmost confidence? Something we used to think was quite rare is instead discovered to be exceptionally common, and suddenly the guy in charge has the nerve to say “we're getting close to the brink of fully understanding the nature of these incredible marvels”?

Do we fully understand anything about the nature of the cosmos? Can we?

> Anyone else feel like they read a ton of wild speculation presented as utmost confidence?

You're reading statements put out by university PR departments, or worse yet, journalists' attempts at summarizing them. It's almost all garbage. The actual information is in papers and conference proceedings.

The lazy and careless way in which popular science communication is performed is frequently counterproductive and foments anti-science attitudes in people who are inherently skeptical but not particularly bright. Unable to read and comprehend the actual paper, they focus on the pop-sci communications and find inconsistencies, exaggerations and omissions in those, then come to doubt science in general.

When somebody's primary exposure to science is through the headlines "Science discovers red wine is good for you" ... "Actually it isn't" ... "Actually it is." "Actually it isn't" ... how can we expect them to believe that scientists actually know what they're doing? We can say "well your iphone is amazing and science made that, so you should take the rest of it on faith" but that doesn't work on a lot of people. And perhaps rightly so; imagine the argument "Our priests are very good at predicting eclipses [true!], so you have faith when they tell us that sacrificing your child is necessary to ensure a good harvest."

>people who are inherently skeptical but not particularly bright.

Not like you, of course. You’re so much smarter than the masses right? What an insufferable and ignorant view of the average person.

I didn't say average, so spare me your performative edginess Mr Edgy Quant. I perceive people with anti-science attitudes to be a minority of the general population, albeit a large enough minority to be socially (and democratically) significant. I'm talking about people who say (and mean, without trolling intent) things like "space is fake, NASA is lying to us." As many as 1 in 5 Americans believe the moon landings were faked, despite all the common landing-denialist talking points being easy [for literate people] to debunk with only a few minutes of research.

Do you think it is insufferable and ignorant to acknowledge the fact that roughly 1 in 5 adult Americans is barely literate, and roughly half read below a 6th grade level? Should we pretend this isn't true, for the sake of decorum? (If you doubt these figures, I trust that you know how to look it up.) To people like this, the primary scientific literature is simply inaccessible. Some of them go with the flow and take science on faith, but the more skeptical among them will often wind up distrusting scientists because pop-sci communication is rife with inconsistencies and exaggerations even they can spot.

If you think I've gotten anything factually wrong in the above, please point it out. If your problem is merely with my attitude, then I can assure you the feeling is mutual.

"We are so close to figuring it all out! SO CLOSE!!! More funding please so we can get EVEN CLOSER!!1!"

A weird property of the universe is the fact it has everything in it. There is no such thing as rare. Everything is here. Anyone making a bold claim about understanding the universe just has more time and a bigger telescope than the previous scientist.

Just because everything is here doesn’t mean nothing is “rare”

“Everything” doesn’t mean equal amounts of every thing.

>“Everything” doesn’t mean equal amounts of every thing.

Yes, it does in this case. The universe is infinite.

> The universe is infinite.

Well that’s a completely bogus claim you’ve entirely made up and presented as fact. But I’ll bite anyways: even infinite sets can have different cardinalities. The set of natural vs real numbers, for instance.

Don't conflate reality with math. The map is not the territory. The universe is infinite until it is proven not to be, because infinity cannot be measured.

Actually, the universe is not infinite until proven to be, because infinity cannot be measured.

(See how making claims with 0 support besides pseudo-ontological bologna isn’t helpful?)

Your statement is nonsensical.

I agree. I was holding a mirror of your tripe.

You seem unable to separate faith from fact. And you could certainly use a dose of your “the map is not the territory” quip when it comes to your “logic”.

>The universe is infinite.

Whether or not this is true, it's somewhat irrelevant, as the observable universe is finite, meaning there's a finite amount of "stuff" that can causally influence us. What happens far beyond the observable universe is not worth dwelling on, as we will never see it or be otherwise influenced by it.

"Complete understanding" isn't a real objective. Understanding more than we knew before is more realistic, and yes, I'd say we understand more than we did before, if you take a sample every 5 years or so. Every 5 years is better and better. People keep working on it and always will. The alternative is giving up and stopping all research I guess?

Better how? The most you can definitively say is we understand things differently every 5 years. I doubt there exists a partial order of universal comprehensions, and even if it does exist I wouldn’t be surprised to find that all our so-called “developments” rank exactly equal under it.

As if one was hunting for Pi, knowing it could never be fully resolved, but still: “more digits is closer!”. Except they started with a “4.”

Spoken like a guy that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing

Cute way of saying nothing. Care to say something or just leave it at that?

As someone with an astronomy degree, I found that this all read as completely understandable, and quite plausible. Of course, we never know anything with complete certainty, but I think you massively under-estimate the amount of data taken and analysed and the detail of the models examined when coming to these conclusions.

Of course the wording is understandable, it’s downright trivial as a concept. It certainly doesn’t take an astronomy degree to comprehend it. My objection is to the idea that some “expert” in the field is presented with new facts that seemingly stand in opposition to the prior commonly held belief and is able to immediately pivot to “wow we sure have a deep understanding here, now! now, we just about know everything!”

And people with astronomy degrees are quite likely to believe astronomical observations bring them closer to “The Truth”, because “data”. Just as people with CS degrees believe computational study does the same, because “simulation”. And those with Psyc degrees…

I don't see anything that stands "in opposition to the prior commonly held belief" nor any claim that "now, we just about know everything!" It seems like a natural progression of our understanding. Perhaps, you read a different article than I did.

I in fact directly quoted what I am referring to in my first comment. Perhaps you responded to a different comment than intended?

And the whole point of the article is to say we used to think these things were super rare but actually they’re quite common… now we know everything!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com