4 ms·

How 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 molecul

• somebodythere 7y ago
  As 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 7y ago
    thanks 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 7y ago
  I 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 7y ago
    This 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.