
Scientists Discovered a Gigantic Structure in a Hidden Zone of Space - pseudolus
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg8vg7/scientists-discovered-a-gigantic-structure-in-a-hidden-zone-of-space
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airstrike
Not an expert, but it seems to me that calling it "structure" in the headline
without context is extremely clickbaity even if technically correct.

Why not say "Scientists Observe a New Cosmic Structure for the First Time"?

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kosievdmerwe
This is one of the ways the media (and politicians) lie. They use words that
are technically correct if you squint, but severely misleading.

Given that one of the functions of a journalist is to clearly communicate,
they're either incompetent or they're deliberately misleading. And it's pretty
clear it's the second.

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jollofricepeas
Respectfully, I’m not sure you understand the function of the press.

When has journalism ever stuck to facts? When has the “news” been more than
stories and opinion?

Hint: Never

Your assumptions aren’t based in fact and smack of elitism. Press has no
responsibility to meet your personal idea of competency.

Read: A History of News by Mitchell Stephens
[https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news)

Read:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

Read:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism)

~~~
kosievdmerwe
Given that the media wants to claim to be the fourth estate and a vital part
of democracy, I don't think I'm wrong to hold them to a higher standard.
Washington Post's slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness".

And frankly when you or anyone starts with "Respectfully", you're typically
not. Your post certainly only has a thin veneer.

~~~
jollofricepeas
Respectfully, I could have been nasty but chose not to.

Again, who are you that your standards are worthy meeting?

The role of press is to exist.

The sooner you understand this then you’ll have a better appreciation for all
press outlets even those you disagree with.

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deanCommie
I am highly curious about two questions that a physicist or a cosmologist
could maybe answer...

1) What do we actually know about these "structures", and fundamentally how
certain are we that they have any consequence whatsoever to our understanding
of the universe? Is it possible that the patterns we notice are just us being
humans noticing patterns in randomly generated white noise?

2) Could there be emergent behaviours at the super-astronomical scale where
just like electrons and protons and other elementary particles combine to all
sorts of emergent higher order behaviour in atoms and elements, could there be
similar outcomes at the multi-galaxy-cluster scale that would be impossible to
observe at the human scale?

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gnramires
Not a physicist, but as far as 2 goes, galaxies are all atoms interacting
after all. Filaments themselves are emergent structures formed from the
interaction of large amounts of mass-energy at the largest scales. Forces have
different ranges (scaling behavior) thus the behavior of matter changes as you
change scales. At the largest scales it is mostly purely gravitational to my
knowledge (plus dark energy which is also modeled gravitationally).

When you play billiards you don't expect them to gravitate toward each other!
If they were on the scale of planets though, you might (it depends on how you
scale their velocities). Or if you waited extremely long times, and were not
under the influence of Earth's gravity you also might notice in billiards.

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KhoomeiK
> At the largest scales it is mostly purely gravitational to my knowledge
> (plus dark energy which is also modeled gravitationally).

I think what OP might've been alluding to is the idea that phenomena like dark
energy could have a more elegant explanation that is the result of emergent
behavior at large scales. Just like magnetism was originally seen almost like
magic, but it was later realized that it's simply an emergent property of the
electric force i.e. electromagnetism.

~~~
deanCommie
Exactly, thanks for clarifying that better than I did!

i wonder if there is a possible way to measure that.

It does seem not crazy that if the laws of physics are completely different at
nanoscopic scales, they would also be different at gigascopic ones?

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darepublic
My heart thought aliens, but my head knew better

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scoot_718
Is this the terrible secret of space?

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Cthulhu_
? the Great Old Ones ignoring us from just outside our perception isn't a
secret...

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lifeisstillgood
Ok - I am badly lost. Are we saying we have a map of the known universe, and
it has a South Pole? I think this would be a cool map to share - start putting
copies up on school walls like the Peters Projection

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chmod775
There's a few interactive 3D maps of the universe floating around. A really
cool one was posted this year on HN, but I can't find it anymore.

In any case, here's another one: [https://in-the-
sky.org/ngc3d.php](https://in-the-sky.org/ngc3d.php)

North/South pole are on that map.

Since we can observe the universe for the same distance in every direction, I
guess it makes sense that we'd give the resulting sphere a north and a south
pole.

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todaysAI
The more we understand about the universe, the more it's structure resembles
the brain. Galaxies, or more accurately, the black holes in the middle of
galaxies resemble the neurons and these filaments and magnetic fields are the
synapses.

~~~
metafunctor
Maybe that's a tempting thought, but it's clearly, how should I put this
delicately… bullshit?

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todaysAI
I knew I would get this answer if at all. Just shows that humans feel we are
at the centre of the universe, whatever that universe is. Sounds like the
1500's all over again. I don't understand how one can answer like this. We
can't even explain the simplest of experiments; the double-slit experiment,
but here we have some HN subscriber saying bullshit to something that he/she
doesn't understand, and even pressed the down-vote to further show their
disgust at the insinuation that the universe may not adhere to their ill-
formed, or how do I say politely, childish view of what the universe could
actually be.

But he/she said that 'clearly' I am wrong. Not thinking that maybe reality
isn't quite what we think with the small amount of information that we have at
the moment.

The only physical limitation is the Planck length and everything above this is
fair game. Our universe could be a solitude brain and the multiverse could be
the collective of brains but damn I've been shot-down by a HN subscriber that
told me it's clearly bullshit.

~~~
metafunctor
I probably should not be engaging with you at all, because you appear to be
convinced that your theory of we-are-in-a-celestial-brain must be correct or
at least very probably correct. Why else would you dismiss my, admittedly
blunt, refusal by calling me childish?

What evidence do you have, other than "gee looks like a brain to me", that
your theory might be correct? Is it not, indeed, childish, to hold such a
view, out of a trillion other similarly justifiable views?

Just because current information cannot refute your favorite model doesn't
mean it's true! This is very basic logic. At least come up with an experiment
to verify some aspect of your theory; otherwise you’re going to forever be in
the “gee looks like X to me” la-la land of idiots.

In other words, what the hell are you going on about?

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svntid
clickbait

