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Clickbaity title. Should have been "Astronomers have spotted the universe’s first type of molecule", or "Astronomers have spotted molecules like the universe’s
by _bxg1 8y ago
Clickbaity title. Should have been "Astronomers have spotted the universe’s first type of molecule", or "Astronomers have spotted molecules like the universe’s first".
- jiveturkey 8y agosorry to say so, but that seems rather obvious. of course astronomers haven't spotted the actual first instance of a molecule.
- snakeboy 8y agoIf you come from a non-technical background, where many physical discoveries of varying difficulty all seem impossible, it's an obviously misleading headline.
- subw00f 8y agoHow often people of non technical background go to science magazine with so little knowledge that they assume there's a way to find the universe's first molecule?
- somebodythere 8y agoAs someone who is technical in computer science and non-technical in physics and astronomy, "pulsars may spew bits of exotic matter that convert everything they touch" and "scientists have found literally the first molecule" are equally believable to me.
- jiveturkey 8y agothanks for this set of replies. i now agree, the headline could be interpreted as misleading. were it in business insider, i'd say intentionally. in a science mag (that isn't _Popular Science_), i still give the editors the benefit of the doubt.
- djakjxnanjak 8y agoI don’t know much about physics/astronomy. My rough understanding is that very early in the Big Bang, all matter/energy was condensed into some really exotic form and it turned into atoms and molecules as it expanded. When I read the headline, I imagined that during the Big Bang a molecule was produced that somehow had a lot of energy and emitted that energy in such a way that we managed to detect some kind of echo of it today. I have seen images described as images of radiation from the Big Bang, so this sounded impressive but not unbelievable to me.
- _bxg1 8y agoThis was my impression too. I still thought it was probably not what they meant - maybe a 10% chance that it was - but it was misleading nonetheless.
- emilfihlman 8y agoThis whole thing read like a piece of VXJunkies.
- gus_massa 8y agoPart of the problem is that they pick a press release and did a bad job compressing it. They even forget the charge "+" in the molecules. Here is another link of a publication that didn't break the press release: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/astronomers-find-oldest-type-of-molecule-in-space http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/astronomers-find-oldes...
- sametmax 8y agoAlso, why ? The correct title is amazing enough !