Astronomers discover thousands of red galaxy hearts with powerful radio signals

https://www.space.com/radio-signal-active-galaxy-hearts-red-quasars

by Brajeshwar • 3 years ago

68 23 3 years ago

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?

nyssos• 3 years ago

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.

mcpackieh2• 3 years ago

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."

I_Am_Nous• 3 years ago

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

1970-01-014• 3 years ago

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.

dartos• 3 years ago

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

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

dave_sullivan2• 3 years ago

"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?

explaininjs8• 3 years ago

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.”

goodcanadian2• 3 years ago

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.

explaininjs8• 3 years ago

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…

Astronomers discover thousands of red galaxy hearts with powerful radio signals

Related Stories