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> "To photographers and stargazers in northern climes, Steve has been a familiar night phenomenon for decades. But the mysterious ribbons of light only entered

> "To photographers and stargazers in northern climes, Steve has been a familiar night phenomenon for decades. But the mysterious ribbons of light only entered the scientific literature for the first time earlier this year" It's so exciting to realize how little we really know. Think about how many fantastic unexplained things there must be in the universe if we haven't even finished understanding the ones right under our noses. There's so much complexity that we can easily create things that are too complicated for one person, or even many, to fully understand.

fsloth 8y ago
"Think about how many fantastic unexplained things there must be in the universe if we haven't even finished understanding the ones right under our noses." Well said. I think because so much is already in our books we forget how much miraculous things actually surround us and we forget to look at them and seek them. Some biologist anecdotally said that the best place to hunt new species unknown to science is your own back yard.
AstralStorm 8y ago
So many fantastic things you won't get to research or even see because you're working half your life for someone or something.
- throwaway76543 8y ago
  On the other hand, without all this working for others we wouldn't have a system which lets us spend that other half of our lives seeing the things we do get to see. It's a net win overall.
  - cortic 8y ago
    That's just speculation, what system are you imagining in place of 'wage labour'? chattel? I imagine UBI and an explosion in the sciences; When anyone with interest can afford to follow that interest.
    - throwaway76543 8y ago
      No, it's not speculation. I have a cite: literally the entire progression of human history and societal development. Steady (and in the last century, enormous) progression toward more leisure time, with more wealth and latitude at our disposal than ever before. UBI is good. You're going to fund UBI by working for other people.
      - cortic 8y ago
        Having a system to enriches the few who don't need more wealth reinforced by impoverishing the many is better than chattel slavery and worse than a system which offers real choice and ownership of ones labor.
        throwaway76543 8y ago
        You appear to have a twisted understanding of both economics and human history.
        cortic 8y ago
        maybe. History shows me that, unregulated, our system makes kings and queens that own not only own land and wealth but people as well. If i wanted to make a system that insured the absolute minimum advancement and progress, the absolute maximum misery and poverty, while giving a random few almost god like powers..
        throwaway76543 8y ago
        See, that's what I'm talking about. What history actually shows is that humans have steadily moved away from barbaric structures such as owning people. Primarily through the construction of societies built around the notion of private employment. Your working assumptions are gross distortions of reality.
        dang 8y ago
        Can you please not do flamewars on HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sametmax 8y ago
Even things we do understand and that we have documented are underused. Let's take a few examples. I had Malaria 10 years ago. Well, did you know Atovaquone-Proguanil (e.g: Malarone) can not only prevent Malaria, but also __cure__ it, killing the plasmodium in the liver? Still, most people, including a lot of doctors, think you can't cure Malaria and you have to live with it for life. The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906, yet it was only banned a century later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos). WHO declared in 2015 that processed meat was now classified as carcinogenic to humans. The information is publically available on their website (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/), but who knows about it ? So not only our understanding of the universe is very limited, but also, our ability to propagate (https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ :)) and use said understanding is even more limited.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" —Upton Sinclair
- ljcn 8y ago
  > The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906, yet it was only banned a century later Incredibly it's still not generally banned in the USA; only a small list of products are banned by the EPA federally.[0] It was increasingly banned in Europe from the mid 1980s, and totally banned throughout the EU in 2005.[1] [0] https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos [1] https://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/13445_en.html https://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/13445_en.html > but who knows about it ? That was big news in Europe, e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34615621 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34615621
  - sametmax 8y ago
    Making the news once doesn't mean people know about it, unfortunately. Otherwise people would not vote for crooked politicians after their first idiotic behavior. Unless you educate again and again, generation after generation, abstract knowledge doesn't stick.
some_account 8y ago
There is a lot of "explained" things that are very wrong as well, it's just that scientists pick the "most likely" explanation since they have to.
nashashmi 8y ago
We often get lost in the verbosity of textbooks and the amount of information bombarded at us that we fail to realize how primitive and simple the steps to discovering scientific knowledge were and how many centuries it took to compile this information into something we sort of understand today. Had we learned the science with this conscience in mind we would not only have taken the science with healthier doubt but also kept our own eyes open to find possibilities of deviations and reasons to make further discovery.

fsloth 8y ago

"Think about how many fantastic unexplained things there must be in the universe if we haven't even finished understanding the ones right under our noses." Well said. I think because so much is already in our books we forget how much miraculous things actually surround us and we forget to look at them and seek them. Some biologist anecdotally said that the best place to hunt new species unknown to science is your own back yard.

AstralStorm 8y ago

So many fantastic things you won't get to research or even see because you're working half your life for someone or something.

throwaway76543 8y ago
On the other hand, without all this working for others we wouldn't have a system which lets us spend that other half of our lives seeing the things we do get to see. It's a net win overall.
- cortic 8y ago
  That's just speculation, what system are you imagining in place of 'wage labour'? chattel? I imagine UBI and an explosion in the sciences; When anyone with interest can afford to follow that interest.
  - throwaway76543 8y ago
    No, it's not speculation. I have a cite: literally the entire progression of human history and societal development. Steady (and in the last century, enormous) progression toward more leisure time, with more wealth and latitude at our disposal than ever before. UBI is good. You're going to fund UBI by working for other people.
    - cortic 8y ago
      Having a system to enriches the few who don't need more wealth reinforced by impoverishing the many is better than chattel slavery and worse than a system which offers real choice and ownership of ones labor.
      - throwaway76543 8y ago
        You appear to have a twisted understanding of both economics and human history.
        cortic 8y ago
        maybe. History shows me that, unregulated, our system makes kings and queens that own not only own land and wealth but people as well. If i wanted to make a system that insured the absolute minimum advancement and progress, the absolute maximum misery and poverty, while giving a random few almost god like powers..
        throwaway76543 8y ago
        See, that's what I'm talking about. What history actually shows is that humans have steadily moved away from barbaric structures such as owning people. Primarily through the construction of societies built around the notion of private employment. Your working assumptions are gross distortions of reality.
        dang 8y ago
        Can you please not do flamewars on HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sametmax 8y ago

Even things we do understand and that we have documented are underused. Let's take a few examples. I had Malaria 10 years ago. Well, did you know Atovaquone-Proguanil (e.g: Malarone) can not only prevent Malaria, but also __cure__ it, killing the plasmodium in the liver? Still, most people, including a lot of doctors, think you can't cure Malaria and you have to live with it for life. The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906, yet it was only banned a century later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos). WHO declared in 2015 that processed meat was now classified as carcinogenic to humans. The information is publically available on their website (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/), but who knows about it ? So not only our understanding of the universe is very limited, but also, our ability to propagate (https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ :)) and use said understanding is even more limited.

Sharlin 8y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" —Upton Sinclair
ljcn 8y ago
> The first documented death related to asbestos was in 1906, yet it was only banned a century later Incredibly it's still not generally banned in the USA; only a small list of products are banned by the EPA federally.[0] It was increasingly banned in Europe from the mid 1980s, and totally banned throughout the EU in 2005.[1] [0] https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/us-federal-bans-asbestos [1] https://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/13445_en.html https://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/13445_en.html > but who knows about it ? That was big news in Europe, e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34615621 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34615621
- sametmax 8y ago
  Making the news once doesn't mean people know about it, unfortunately. Otherwise people would not vote for crooked politicians after their first idiotic behavior. Unless you educate again and again, generation after generation, abstract knowledge doesn't stick.

some_account 8y ago

There is a lot of "explained" things that are very wrong as well, it's just that scientists pick the "most likely" explanation since they have to.

nashashmi 8y ago

We often get lost in the verbosity of textbooks and the amount of information bombarded at us that we fail to realize how primitive and simple the steps to discovering scientific knowledge were and how many centuries it took to compile this information into something we sort of understand today. Had we learned the science with this conscience in mind we would not only have taken the science with healthier doubt but also kept our own eyes open to find possibilities of deviations and reasons to make further discovery.