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Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ceejayoz on Saturday August 31, 2024 @08:24PM (#41413103)
I'm gonna guess that the prominent astronomers at several top-notch universities mentioned have heard of globular clusters, and that the reason it's not mentioned is it's not relevant.
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Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by jvanderbot on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:31PM (#41414043)
Both are wrong. A more unassuming way of phrasing it would be "how did they rule out X", and of course the better response is to take the most generous interpretation and provide and informative response to the spirit of that generous interpretation.
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ordu on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:54PM (#41414142)
> Is that level of snark necessary or helpful to anyone? I think a far more valuable and helpful response would be to point out why these are not globular clusters. Either you don't know (why reply at all?), or you deliberately chose to withhold that (again: why reply at all?).

I agree with you, that the explanation why that can't be globular clusters would be much more helpful, but if one wants to get it, they'd better do not say things like "globular clusters are not even mentioned in that article, which is weird." People see such statements and answer to them.

When you're asking a question you need to be focused on your question, a little slip can lead to results exactly as we see. If I was asking that question, I would mention my disappointment with the lack of mention of globular clusters, but I wouldn't call the article weird because of this, I'd rather mention my limited knowledge of astronomy and my curiosity and my hunger for knowledge, and I make it clear that these are the reasons of my disappointment, not the bad work of the authors of the article.

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by hollerith on Saturday August 31, 2024 @10:58PM (#41413882)
Is this level of tone policing helpful on net?
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by airstrike on Sunday September 01, 2024 @12:13AM (#41414225)
[delayed]
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by nilkn on Saturday August 31, 2024 @10:59PM (#41413888)
In my estimation, yes. I'd like to see replies here focus on helpfulness and knowledge sharing. You are certainly free to disagree.
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by hollerith on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:10PM (#41413948)
OK, even though the comment that you think is too snarky does not bother me, I will take this conversation to mean that I should use a stricter standard than merely "would not bother me" to which to hold my own comments.

The comment at which the snark was direct is a bad comment (the writer does not know enough about astronomy to make any weird feeling he has about an astronomy article to be the least bit informative) but I'll downvote comments like that rather than try to defend snarky replies to them.

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ProAm on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:03PM (#41413913)
I'll say on HN I do appreciate that. This is one of the last bastions of good conversations on the net. We all try to do our best to keep it that way, and one of the methods is to call out comments as such. Just my opinion but I appreciate it, snarky or not we just want good conversation even if its among dissenting opinions.
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by blueflow on Sunday September 01, 2024 @02:39PM (#41419198)
Having continued the original discussion in another sub-thread, yes.
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by at_a_remove on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:03PM (#41413909)
It certainly could be helpful, as it is a reminder that the people making the observations also have functioning brains and, being more expert in the topic than the naive querent, would most likely have already considered the obvious. After some contemplation of the rather mild rebuke, the querent might ask better questions, or at least refrain from asking bad ones.

Many folks on HN, when encountering non-"tech" articles in the sciences, have a somewhat distressing habit of plunging toward assumptions which suggest that the people in the article have failed to look for the obvious and/or are decades behind in what the subjects know. This is especially sorrowful, because who among us hasn't suffered through someone asking us, in our specialty, "Why don't you just hit the EASY button? It's around here somewhere! You're making this sound hard!"

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ceejayoz on Saturday August 31, 2024 @10:52PM (#41413849)
> Either you don't know (why reply at all?)

Because, as a lay person, I’ve heard of globular clusters, and that means several experts in the field not talking about them points not to “weird”, but to “nope”.

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by nilkn on Saturday August 31, 2024 @10:58PM (#41413881)
I don't contest the answer "nope" (in fact, I provided an explanation) -- I contest your decision to prioritize snark over helpfulness.
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ceejayoz on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:05PM (#41413918)
I mainly take issue with the “weird” designation, as if every science article must somehow explain everything unrelated the phenomenon isn’t.

Anyone with JWST time slots knows what a globular cluster is. If they say it’s weird and unexplained, it probably is at present.

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by fch42 on Sunday September 01, 2024 @01:15AM (#41414481)
It's unfortunate that during "professional development" we collectively appear to unlearn saying "no". Or, more widely, learn to avoid using simple direct language. It's not limited to scientists :-(
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by somenameforme on Sunday September 01, 2024 @03:00AM (#41414895)
I think it's because the implication of any such question is how/why did they exclude.... It's like when you ask somebody, did you have a nice day? If they respond "yes" or "no", that's breaking the unstated rules of conversation.

And I would add that perceived competence does not preclude elementary solutions or problems. We're all humans, and humans are entirely prone to silliness, regardless of our credentials. NASA lost a near billion dollar Mars orbiter [1] because nobody, of the thousands of highly credentialed people that worked on that project, bothered to ask, 'Did anybody make sure that all components are using the same measurement system (metric vs customary), run a sim, or at least sanity check the data we're getting back?' Because surprisingly, the answer there would have been "no."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by blueflow on Sunday September 01, 2024 @06:44AM (#41415796)
Why? How do the astronomers know that its many stars, how did they rule out its the normal amount but brighter?
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ceejayoz on Sunday September 01, 2024 @11:55AM (#41417915)
Which aspect of the answer do you want? You can write a textbook on such a broad question; how we determine the mass of a galaxy, its composition, its distance, etc.

JWST is seeing brand new things; globular clusters are so well documented as to be part of the original Messier catalog that predates the United States.

Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by blueflow on Sunday September 01, 2024 @01:27PM (#41418617)
The answer is not rocket science. JWST saw something, scientists made an interpretation, there should be an explanation "why" somewhere. And you won't need to write a textbook on that because you can cite prior work.
Re:Astronomers puzzled by little red galaxies that seem impo... by ceejayoz on Sunday September 01, 2024 @02:31PM (#41419119)
There is no solid/proven explanation right now. Only hypotheses to be tested. It’s a new phenomenon they’re working to understand.