Slashdot Mirror
Teenager Makes Discovery About Galaxy Distribution
Janek Kozicki writes "It has been long thought that dwarf galaxies orbiting Andromeda galaxy (M31), or any other galaxy for that matter, are distributed more or less randomly around the host galaxy. It seemed so obvious in fact that nobody took time to check this assumption. Until a 15-year-old student, Neil Ibata, working with his father at the astronomic observatory, wanted to check it out. It turned out that dwarf galaxies tend to be placed on a plane around M31. The finding has been published in Nature. Local press (especially in France) is ecstatic that a finding by a 15-year-old got published in Nature. However, there's another more important point: what other obvious things didn't we really bother to check?"
Raises curiosity: how much work is done by this 15-old boy and how much is actually done by his father?
Actually, since the boy has stated in interviews that he wants to leave France and go to college abroad, the press is not that ecstatic. And at least some papers have pointed out that the boy was somehow lucky (even though he most probably is a bright kid).
bother to check?
Stuff that scientists don't want to be mocked by their peers for checking.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It has been long thought that dwarf galaxies orbiting Andromeda galaxy (M31), or any other galaxy for that matter, are distributed more or less randomly around the host galaxy.
[citation needed]
The planets orbit the sun near the ecliptic plane, so if you were to make an assumption about the distribution of galaxies why would you assume galaxies are distributed randomly?
According to the French press (who actually interviewed the kid, rather than reported second hand information), he worked as an interm in his father's lab. His father assigned him stuff so as to give him the opportunity to learn how to code.
By the kid's own admittance in those interviews, his primary interest was to learn to code; and he actually puts forward that he did. It's only later that his father and the latter's colleagues highlighted the importance of his program's findings, and they put his name forward in their article (rightly so) for having programmed the tool needed to show their hunch.
Anyway, not discounting how bright the kid might be (because he seems to be, even though he admittedly found it necessary to ask his math teacher for information on vectors), but can we please keep a cool head with respect to what actually happened? As in, a kiddo got an internship through his father and coded stuff requested by his father, and landed his name in a scientific article courtesy of his father for having written said article?
Oh how I hate those pointless debate-starter questions. They come off as so amateur.
The story stands on its own. There's no real possibility that on a Slashdot thread someone's going to come up with an obvious unchecked thing that in any way compares with this discovery. It's not a "point" anyway, it's a query.
Not to mention the summary being incorrect anyway. It states in the article abstract that "t has previously been suspected that dwarf galaxies may not be isotropically distributed around our Galaxy, because several are correlated with streams of Hi emission, and may form coplanar groups. These suspicions are supported by recent analyses." So it's already been known about the Milky Way, this is just further analysis regarding M31, not some kind of revolutionary insight. And it only involves about half of the dwarf satellites, not all of them. Whatever. Carry on.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
David Stuart, a gifted Mayan scholar studied under his parents who were both Mayan scholars. By age 18 he had won the MacCarthur Fellowship... it's youngest recipient. "Like Father Like Son" is sometimes an accurate description...While it may be published under his father's name, he might have actually provided something of value. "He's only 15" can hide genius....
...what other obvious things we didn't really bother to check?
Well, let's see here:
Economics:
1) Sovereign debt is not like ordinary debt, so it's OK for the US to have a large deficit
2) A little inflation is good (but we can't tell you what the best value actually is)
Medicine:
1) Depression is a disease, and not a consequence of another disorder (as "fever" is)
2) Depression meds actually work
3) Obesity can be fixed by a) diet, b) exercise, or c) eating less
4) Every medical study that hasn't been replicated at least once
Psychology:
1) Seeing a psychiatrist has more benefit than not seeing one
2) Every study which hasn't been replicated at least once (More info)
Social sciences:
1) Every study which hasn't been replicated at least once
Physics, Chemistry, other "hard" sciences:
Nothing, really. Most everything of note has been replicated and confirmed by independent experimenters.
This actually still up in the air, we still don't understand the galactic halo, distribution of dark matter and why the rotational velocity of the outer galaxy is so fast. So Where the visible matter in a galaxy is, is far less important that where all that other matter is, and what's causing the dwarf galaxies to do what they do has virtually nothing to do with the galactic disk.
Yes, a truly dizzying fact that in space ithings have this uncanny tendency to spin. So you might have a satellite spining around its axis, then the satellite spinning around host planet, the planet spinning around a star, the star around the galactic core or a local cluster of stars, and the galaxy itelf spinning around a bigger galaxy or local cluster of galaxies, and so forth. I remember one "scientist" postulate that the only thing that doesn't spin is the universe itself because nobody has found any evidence to indicate a "universal" spin.
Ya really. This is completely obvious now that somebody's pointed it out.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Like the fact that entire universe is simply a computer simulation being run by our future selves in order to look back in time and understand all of our mistakes? http://news.discovery.com/space/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation-2-121216.html
What you say pales against what I've seen with my own eyes.
A researcher ... from a third world country ... discovered a really wonderful substance from a deep sea shell fish.
That thing can really block pain, without causing any drowsiness, or any adverse side effect.
The person reported his finding to his professor, who seized the chance to publish the finding.
On the published article, no where the name of the original researcher was mentioned.
The substance was later patented, and the patent is worth BILLIONS ... and guess what?
That original researcher got nothing. Not even one single red penny.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I remember one "scientist" postulate that the only thing that doesn't spin is the universe itself because nobody has found any evidence to indicate a "universal" spin.
I'd have called that "scientist" a moron. Conservation of angular momentum is why planets spin round their star, and why stars spin, and why galaxies rotate... It seems to me that if the Universe itself hadn't "spun" in at least a small way then things would have been much different than they are... Indeed, sit on your swivel chair and spin, now put your arms out and you spin more slowly, but notice the forces applied to your arms: They're being pulled outwards by centrifugal force. From your arm's perspective the body isn't spinning, yet there's a force pulling on the arms.
Now, dark energy is a force we can't yet explain. It's accelerating everything away from the center of the Universe -- Why it's almost like the Universe is in a centrifuge, and though the relative motion of everything seems not to be spinning, there's this strange force accelerating things outwards. If everything inside the water is wet, then the water itself is wet. If everything inside the Universe is spinning, then the Universe itself is spinning...
Now, dark energy is a force we can't yet explain. It's accelerating everything away from the center of the Universe -- Why it's almost like the Universe is in a centrifuge, and though the relative motion of everything seems not to be spinning, there's this strange force accelerating things outwards. If everything inside the water is wet, then the water itself is wet. If everything inside the Universe is spinning, then the Universe itself is spinning...
No, there is no center of the universe. Space is expanding in all directions equally as far as we can tell. There is no radial component to this acceleration and has nothing to do with conservation of angular momentum as there is no angular component. You are jumping to false conclusions because you do not understand yet insist on calling other people morons.
Or he might have stumbled on reddit were someone said "its random" and been done with it.