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Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

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31–40 of 189 posts

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#31

Anyone else think this is a huge non-story? Like, of course there's going to be oxygen in distant galaxies. Why wouldn't there be? It would be far more interesting if there wasn't oxygen in distant galaxies.

It seems like you could apply similar thinking to aliens, but if we actually got proof of aliens it'd still be a big deal, right?

Have you not seen the NJ UFO videos of late? Just like oxygen, they're here

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody dogmatically believes in this. This is not an "ideology", just some people having fun speculating existence. A far cry from religion and conspiracy nuts. Stop being so grumpy!

I didn't say "dogmatically believe," I said "accepted as plausible" - Nick Bostrom built an academic career out of this nonsense! Effective altruism people uses these theories to justify their advocacy. I would guess most tech people agree the paperclip maximizer is a serious concern.

Your observation about how sci-fi trappings are the crack in the armour of techies and generally the modern subject are true but I still find the general disimissal of such activities as pointless as any crackpots musings unfair. Sure, Rationalists have a lot of crackpots in their midst and are generally a hard to defend bunch but falsifiable or not, I think there's value in proposing forms and colors of the unknown unknowns or the unknowables.

Paperclip maximizers may never come to be but what do you know, smart machines may upend the world order in Bostrom's lifetime. I'm not very familiar with his work and the amount of rigour that went to it but I generally expect we'll regret some of the consequences of this technology.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#33

Anyone else think this is a huge non-story? Like, of course there's going to be oxygen in distant galaxies. Why wouldn't there be? It would be far more interesting if there wasn't oxygen in distant galaxies.

From the article: >Galaxies usually start their lives full of young stars, which are made mostly of light elements like hydrogen and helium. As stars evolve, they create heavier elements like oxygen, which get dispersed through their host galaxy after they die. Researchers had thought that, at 300 million years old, the Universe was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. However, the two ALMA stud…

> more oxygen than expected is created in young galaxies

Or we have fundamental errors in measuring distances and ages of things which is leading to these unexpected observations.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#34

Anyone else think this is a huge non-story? Like, of course there's going to be oxygen in distant galaxies. Why wouldn't there be? It would be far more interesting if there wasn't oxygen in distant galaxies.

It seems like you could apply similar thinking to aliens, but if we actually got proof of aliens it'd still be a big deal, right?

There is no way we are alone in this universe, what would really be a big deal though is if there are somehow able to traverse light years to reach us.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#35

Anyone else think this is a huge non-story? Like, of course there's going to be oxygen in distant galaxies. Why wouldn't there be? It would be far more interesting if there wasn't oxygen in distant galaxies.

From the article: >Galaxies usually start their lives full of young stars, which are made mostly of light elements like hydrogen and helium. As stars evolve, they create heavier elements like oxygen, which get dispersed through their host galaxy after they die. Researchers had thought that, at 300 million years old, the Universe was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. However, the two ALMA stud…

I'm no astronomer but I believe that the first stars tended to be huge and short-lived. Is it surprising that there would have been supernova and heavy elements ejected from them that early?

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#36

I’m always a bit skeptical about these sorts of things. Perhaps I’m just ignorant about the methods used.. but the amount of data we can get from the most distant known galaxy can’t be very much. How confident can we be that the shift in observed light or whatever is actually from the presence of Oxygen and not one of probably countless other causes, both known and unknown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy#Atoms

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you could apply similar thinking to aliens, but if we actually got proof of aliens it'd still be a big deal, right?

There is no way we are alone in this universe, what would really be a big deal though is if there are somehow able to traverse light years to reach us.

Spooky.

Re: Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy

#40

Anyone else think this is a huge non-story? Like, of course there's going to be oxygen in distant galaxies. Why wouldn't there be? It would be far more interesting if there wasn't oxygen in distant galaxies.

In my eyes even finding life is semi a non-story. Or like obviously there's going to be life even intelligent life since it spawned here. Any idea that we're unique is silly we're just emergent phenomena of initial conditions.
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