Cosmologists Find Eleven Runaway Galaxies

An anonymous reader writes: Discovery News reports that 11 homeless galaxies have been identified by Igor Chilingarian, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Moscow State University, and his fellow astronomers. "The 11 runaway galaxies were found by chance while Chilingarian and co-investigator Ivan Zolotukhin, of the L'Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie and Moscow State University, were scouring publicly-available data (via the Virtual Observatory) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the GALEX satellite for compact elliptical galaxies."

Comments

Homeless galaxies

[rossdee]

I guess the government needs to do something about this

Re:Homeless galaxies

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll leave a dish of water on the front porch, in case they get thirsty..

Re:Homeless galaxies

[Tablizer]

I guess the government needs to do something about this

The rich clusters are getting richer, hogging all the hydrogen gas. Trickle-down hydrogen is not working.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[Livius]

If they're runaways, they have homes, they just choose not to live there.

Re: Homeless galaxies

[Anonymous Coward]

They're Republican galaxies. They hate us. They want to brutalize, kill, torture us and use our heads on a pike as grisly human toilets. Such is the way of their kind.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[ArcadeMan]

The problem is, the parent Universe doesn't care about those runaway galaxies.

Won't somebody think of the runaway galaxies?

Re: Homeless galaxies

[Anonymous Coward]

All this talk of homeless galaxies. These are simply " undocumented galaxies". We should be encouraging them to apply for a "path to legal Galaxy status". Just because they are outside of our arbitrary boundaries doesent mean they are any less of a legal Galaxy. We should come up with an amnesty program to bring all of these undocumented galaxies within our borders.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[donkwich]

Don't give the moochers any support, they'll just spend it on alcohol-filled nebulas

Re:Homeless galaxies

[donkwich]

Apparently these tiny elliptical galaxies were gravitationally thrown out by the cluster. I guess some clusters don't respect that some elliptical galaxies were born this way.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[reboot246]

They're not runaways. They were exiled.

From TFA:
These galaxies are facing a lonely future, exiled from the galaxy clusters they used to live in, said Igor Chilingarian, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Moscow State University.

I wonder why they were exiled. What could a whole galaxy do that was so bad their home cluster would exile them? Maybe they just smelled real bad.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[rtb61]

The answer to that would be, 'er', yes. It indicates that astronomical motions are for more chaotic than imagined and hence as you go down from large to small so that chaos would reflect in more errant objects. So yeah, we can quite readily be impacted by dangerous objects at any time and it behoves us to try to do something about reducing risk, the smaller the objects the more prevalent they and the greater the risk of impact. So finding high risk objects and reducing that risk. It's like the the stupid, why study volcanoes can not do nothing to stop them, what a waste of time. The reason of course to study volcanoes is to figure out when they will erupt and ensure harm to people and property is minimised.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, using a "runaway galaxy" as a mode of space travel solves a lot of issues. Steering is kinda imprecise, though, and you can forget about brakes.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give the moochers any support, they'll just spend it on alcohol-filled nebulas

Hmm, I'm pretty sure nebulas are filled with coffee, not alcohol.

Re:Homeless galaxies

[flappinbooger]

I guess the government needs to do something about this

There ought to be a law!

Re:Homeless galaxies

[Methadras]

I am waiting to see the pictures of the runaway galaxies on milk cartons and on the back of beer/water trucks with their age progression photos as well.

Have You Seen Me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their pictures will naturally be displayed on the side of enormous milk cartons, with an 800 number to call if seen.

Re: Have You Seen Me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be setting up a donation line. If we raise 110 exodollars we can return homeless galaxies to society!

times smaller,,,

[magarity]

which are approximately 1,000 times smaller than our galaxy

Does this mean 1/1000th the size of our galaxy? "Times smaller", "times less" and their ilk are terrible phrases.

Re:times smaller,,,

[cfalcon]

Wait, why would that be confusing?

1000 times larger is : size times 1000

1000 times smaller is : size times 1 / 1000

Re:times smaller,,,

[antiperimetaparalogo]

which are approximately 1,000 times smaller than our galaxy

Does this mean 1/1000th the size of our galaxy? "Times smaller", "times less" and their ilk are terrible phrases.

I understand it as "1/1000th the size of our galaxy", but without absolute confidence and not before spending some "brain cycles", so i agree with you that are terrible phrases.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be your head wasn't screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that your shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that your head two sizes too small.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. 1000 times larger is size times 1001.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Hypoon]

One of the things that always bothered me about this is the ambiguity of the approximation as well. Two interpretations:
More than 500 times but less than 1500 times, using the interpretation Parent suggests, suggests ratios of 0.00067-0.00200.
More than a ratio of 0.0005 but less than a ratio of 0.0015, suggests 667-2000 times.

How much overlap is there between these two ranges? 55.5% (667-1500) of the total range (500-2000) is overlap. The same is true for writing it as ratios: the range from 0.00067-0.00150 is 55.5% of 0.0005-0.0020.

This is tangentially related to why getting 40% off from someone charging 50% over MSRP is better than buying at MSRP. Without thinking about it, one might expect to spend 10% more in the first case (50% - 40% = 10%), but they're actually saving 10% instead (1.5 * 0.6 = 0.9).

Also, what would it mean if they were one time smaller than our galaxy (instead of a thousand times smaller)? How big would they be?

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone says, "The new battery is ten times smaller than the old battery," yes ... we can guess that part of what's meant is, "The new battery is a tenth the size of the old battery."

Except you're not guessing. There is no confusion that it might mean something else. You've seen this pattern dozens, if not hundreds of times before, and it always means the same thing.

The reason we have lots of vocabulary words, adjectives, and constructions is so that we can be nuanced and more precise in simple communication.

Yes, English has many nuanced words, but smaller is not one of them. It means comparatively small. It is one of the more basic and common words, and has a simple meaning.

you're communicating that the old battery is small,

No, you're not. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say something like, "The Small Magellanic Cloud is the smaller of the two Magellanic Clouds," without implying it is smaller than a breadbox or even small in general.

It's no different than people who say, "I could care less," when they mean exactly the opposite

It is very different from that phrase. That phrase has a literal meaning exactly opposite the intended meaning. The phrase "ten times smaller" doesn't have multiple interpretations (unless contorting things as GP said). Even if we ignore that, and take your meaning that it implies both items are small for some reason, that is still not the opposite of saying one is not as large as the other.

Fine, you don't like the wording. But you're trying pretty hard to post hoc rationalize a justification instead of just admitting you don't like it... then you run with it and project what that must about people who don't share your dislike.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone says, "The new battery is ten times smaller than the old battery," yes ... we can guess that part of what's meant is, "The new battery is a tenth the size of the old battery."

Just like every time someone says, "Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B," I have to guess that, "Product B is $2 more than Product A." Maybe we shouldn't have slept through math class.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

More than 500 times but less than 1500 times, using the interpretation Parent suggests, suggests ratios of 0.00067-0.00200.
More than a ratio of 0.0005 but less than a ratio of 0.0015, suggests 667-2000 times.

This has nothing to do with the wording the original poster is complaining about, and everything to do with propagation of errors through a non-linear equation. You can look up linear approximation of errors using derivatives of whatever formula you are using, but it assumes that your errors are small. But for larger errors, you can't just slap a symmetric percentage on it and expect it to be consistent.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

I also see time times the dumbing down of society.

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

There is no confusion that it might mean something else.

Yes, there IS confusion. Are we supposed to infer that the thing that the new 10-times-smaller version is being compared to was already considered small? That's what implied, but nobody knows for sure because the person saying it is lazily using a common, and poorly thought out, construction that doesn't actually tell us that.

No, you're not. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say something like, "The Small Magellanic Cloud is the smaller of the two Magellanic Clouds," without implying it is smaller than a breadbox or even small in general.

OK. But let's say you don't know how big the Small Magellanic Cloud is, relative to, say, the Milky Way, or Andromeda, or anything else. And then someone says, "We've just found a new galaxy, hiding behind a dust cloud, and it's three times smaller than the Magellanic Cloud." What are you supposed to gather from that use?

Fine, you don't like the wording

No, I don't like people conveying information in a way that forces you to go research something they mentioned without providing any useful context. When somebody cites a comparative size, but doesn't explain why (or if) that comparison is meaningful, then it's a waste of time. Especially when the communication is theoretically about science and/or technology.

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

Just like every time someone says, "Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B," I have to guess that, "Product B is $2 more than Product A." Maybe we shouldn't have slept through math class.

Math doesn't help in the absence of context. If Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B, but Product B costs $10,000 ... does it really matter? That's a little different than Product B costing $3, right? Right. In real life, context actually matters, or you're just wasting people's time.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

A is ten times smaller than B

Are we supposed to infer that B is smaller than C? No, you're not supposed to be inferring anything about the size of A or B relative to some third object. Nothing about that is being said, nothing is being implied, and your insistence of making such an inference is a non sequitur.

"We've just found a new galaxy, hiding behind a dust cloud, and it's three times smaller than the Magellanic Cloud." What are you supposed to gather from that use?

First off, there is no "the Magellanic Cloud," and second off, all you're supposed to gather from that is that the particular Magellanic Cloud they are talking about is three times bigger.

No, I don't like people conveying information in a way that forces you to go research something they mentioned without providing any useful context

The comparison here was made to the Milky Way, not some obscure thing you need to research. If you don't have a sense of size of the Milky Way, you need to learn some much more basic level astronomy before reading astronomy news. Not every news site is going to target people with no background or exposure to some of the basics. You'll notice they didn't also define what a galaxy is, something that if you looked up would likely contain some absolute size references. They didn't even define what an elliptical galaxy is, and talked about it. You should take this as a hint that it is targeting people with some basic knowledge.

Besides, this complaint has absolutely nothing to do with the wording. If they said our galaxy is 1000 times larger than these other galaxies, they would still be giving you no clues to the size of our galaxy.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, that is your issue? That has nothing to do with the wording people are arguing over, as both ways of wording bigger vs. smaller can be done with the same lack of context. Speaking wasting people's time...

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

A is ten times smaller than B

So what you're saying is, "B is already small, and A is even smaller."

Right?

Are you presuming that someone already understands B to be considered small? What is B small compared to?

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

That has nothing to do with the wording people are arguing over

No, that's EXACTLY what people are arguing about. You say "A is ten times smaller than B" when B is already understood to be small compared to something else. The implication in that sentence is that B is already known for its smallness, and A is even smaller. Except, people use that same construction even when B isn't considered small. They use that incorrect connotation when what they're really trying to say is, "B is big, but A is only a tenth as big."

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's EXACTLY what people are arguing about.

No, it is quite obvious you're the only one arguing about that. Just look at every other post on the thread, or one of dozens of other such threads that pop up frequently. They're complaining you can't equate "1000 x" with "0.001x," that it makes no sense to use a large number to convey what should be a small number. No one is questioning if it says anything about the original being small.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

ScentCone, you clearly have some kind of learning disability; not sure why you read Slashdot.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? That has nothing to do with the problem. Such stupid wording should never be used, regardless of if "B is understood to be small." 100% less is zero, 200% less is negative... 1000x times smaller makes no sense. This isn't an issue of connotation, but that the literal meaning of the words is incorrect and idiotic.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, "B is already small, and A is even smaller."

No. The phrase "A is ten times smaller than B" is equivalent to the statement SizeA = 0.1 * SizeB. There is nothing in there constraining SizeA or SizeB relative to anything else, just the size relative to each other.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Dog-Cow]

Is English your 23rd language or something? Did you fail every lesson related to logic? Did you sleep through every language class? Your arguments make no sense to an English speaker. Perhaps you should learn the language before you criticise how others use it.

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

It's a shame that your own literacy is so limited, and that your own ability to parse the differences between words is disabled by a lack of vocabulary breadth. That's got to be frustrating. Or maybe not, since perhaps ignorance is bliss in some way, right?

Saying that something is "ten times smaller" is like saying "ten times more small." The phrase "ten times" is a multiplier. It means that you're describing an aspect of something, and saying that there is ten times as much of that aspect. In that usage, the aspect you're describing and comparing is the smallness.

By choosing that construction ("A is ten times smaller than B"), you're deliberately focusing on B's size, and implying that the smallness of B is the thing that's being multiplied ... that B's smallness is important in what you're communicating, and that it's of note because A's size is even more so (small, that is). If we're not trying to convey B's smallness as part of the concept being communicated (perhaps B isn't really thought of as small at all, in the scheme of things), a different construction makes more sense. Makes for better communication: "A is tenth of B's size." We're still describing the relationship, but doing so without including words that suggest B's size is already considered small.

That you don't have the cognitive and communication skills to understand the difference, or that you DO, and prefer to have communication dumbed down and muddied, and require more back and forth to clarify what you mean, says a lot about you. Which is unfortunate. That you think you have to insult someone else in order to feel better about it is just kind of pathetic, really.

Re:times smaller,,,

[WillKemp]

"Times smaller", "times less" and their ilk are terrible phrases.

I agree - but if i ever express that, nobody understands the problem. I'm glad i'm not the only weird one!

The issue is how small is it to start with? We can easily express how large something is - there are units for that - but there are no units for smallness. So if thing A is 10 times smaller than thing B, how small is thing B? You can tell me how big it is, but you can't tell me how small it is.

Yeah, we all know what it means - but that doesn't make the illogicalness of it grate any less.

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

There is nothing in there constraining SizeA or SizeB relative to anything else, just the size relative to each other.

No, no constraints in that sense. Just the larger constraints introduced by the fact that the purpose of saying anything at all, in that context, is to communicate something meaningful about A's size. And by choosing the "ten times more" construction, part of what you're communicating is the fact that B, the thing to which you're comparing A, is by implication already considered small. That format (rather than saying, "A is a tenth B's size") is a choice of words that communicates the understand that B is small, and A is even more small. The phrase "ten times smaller" is using the word "smaller" in the sense of "more small."

The words "ten times" is a multiplier. It's used, in a comparison, to say that one value is LARGER than another. In this usage, the smallness of A is ten times larger than the smallness of B. Trotting out that multiplier is a deliberate choice made to focus on smallness in both A and B, with A having ten times more of it. That doesn't describe the size of B, but it communicates that notion that B is already - in the scheme of things - considered small, and A more so.

Re:times smaller,,,

[WillKemp]

Wait, why would that be confusing?

It's not confusing, it's illogical.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

You go on about implications and how it is not used in the right situation. This isn't the problem at all. The issue is that not that is a bad use of a phrase, but that the phrase itself is bad and unusable everywhere. This is why the original post calls it a "terrible phrase," and compares it to "times less."

Re:times smaller,,,

[Holi]

Where do you get that b is small? All you have is a relative size comparison. It infers nothing about the size of B.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I'm not even any of those other AC's, but you need to let it go or learn english. So you had to look up some common knowledge - everyone has a brain fart once in awhile, but all you're proving here is that either:
a) you're intellect is ten times smaller than the average persons
or
b) the average persons ego is ten times smaller than yours.

Re:times smaller,,,

[ScentCone]

I get it. It's just too much trouble for you to choose between multiple ways of saying something in order to be succinct instead of vague. People who don't value clarity never realize that they people they're talking to - every time that happens - value that communication (and the person attempting it) less and less over time.

What's so hard to understand? This forum is full of people correcting others' poor use of communication when talking about everything from natural selection to global warming to employment demographics. Someone makes a sloppy choice of phrase, and the simple thing they're trying to convey turns into a four-step back and forth during which everyone from trolls to the merely dim decide to screw up the thread or just rant because the OP couldn't trouble themselves to just speak clearly in the first place.

This particular lapse in clarity, which comes up regularly in lazy science and technology reporting, isn't the point. The larger point is the grinding erosion in careful communication, and the erosion in clear and critical thinking of which that is an indicator. You think this is about ego? It's about understanding the power and value of properly nuanced communication, especially in the shortened format that venues like this tend to encourage.

I need to learn English? What you're really saying is, I need to forget English, because it's just too much trouble to quickly sort through the differences found in several ways to say the same thing, each of which contributes to a more quickly digested communication of different ideas. You're cranky because I'm not a fan of lazy thinking, and the fact that you think "learning English" means forgetting how to distinguish between different words is exactly the larger problem I'm pointing out.

Re:times smaller,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

In cosmology, "1, 000 times smaller" is defined as 10^[log10(MilkyWay)-log10(OtherGalaxy)]~1000.

Runaway galaxies?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Time to call out the truant black hole...

This summary

[Anonymous Coward]

was at least 50% names.

And OMG IT MATTERS!

[jeffb (2.718)]

Until now I hadn't realized that there are actually people out there RIGHT THIS MINUTE who are several times more bored than I am. (Not, upon pain of death, to be confused with "several times as bored", or, God forbid, "several times less interested".

The man who needs to know about this

[techno-vampire]

It's a shame that Del Shannon isn't with us any more, because he'd have the perfect response to this news.

The LTDs

[PopeRatzo]

The "Runaway Galaxies" was the name of my garage band in the 70s.

Trolling with mods...

[Anonymous Coward]

The above AC and mods either don't know how multiplication works (1000 times larger is multiplying by 1000, not the same as saying 100,000% larger), or they are just using their mod points to troll people. Just like the other modded up post further up saying using the word smaller implies something must be small...

There's another possibility!

[Anonymous Coward]

They could be bride galaxies who were about to marry the boy their parents expected them to. However at the last minute these runaway galaxies realized that there was another boy galaxy who could really make them happy, if only given the chance!

Oh, so romantic...

Headline Creep

[bromoseltzer]

"Cosmologists Find..." makes a snappy headline, but TFA is right - the discoverers were astronomers. Those galaxies are far away, but probably not at _cosmological_ distances, i.e. comparable to the scale of the universe. The scale of astronomy is mostly << scale of cosmology.

SMH

[Larryish]

Fuck.

Now we have to give the homeless planets (mostly the dark planets) some sort of EBT so they have enough weed money left, after the rent, to go to the Littel-Wayn-eVerse..