4 ms·

Yes, I have meat people who thought pictures of our galaxy were actually pictures of our galaxy. (edit: I mean, from outside)

DavidHm 7y ago
See, I wasn't sure whether that's a typo or the way an AI would refer to us.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  They're made out of meat: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
gus_massa 7y ago
When I was young the Milky way "was" an spiral galaxy, now it "is" a barred spiral galaxy and the "photo" changed according. :)
- raattgift 7y ago
  Think of what it "was" when your grandparents were young! In the 1910s, the observables were extremely faint visible-light nebulae, with M13 (Hercules) closely comparable to M33 (Triangulum), although the spiral structure and larger solid angle of the latter was known since 1850: http://www.messier.seds.org/more/m033_rosse.html http://www.messier.seds.org/more/m033_rosse.html (This only about five years after the first known resolution of nebulae into elliptical, spiral, and irregular; at the time the linked sketch was drawn there were enough observations of spiral nebulae to decide that M33 must be one as well). Observations were consistent with an extragalactic but nearby star cluster. Better observations led to an evolution of what, retrospectively, M33 "was": from closely comparable with M13 to more than a hundred times further away (~ 6.8 vs ~ 850kpc), and tens of billions rather than hundreds of thousands of stars. Perhaps it's best to think of "was" and "is" in relation to human observations. (This also comes up whenever someone objects to talking in the present sense about today's observations of objects at kiloparsec distances, as in "Sag A* is noisy today" provoking "no, it was noisy 26 000 years ago!" -- and of course hypotheses about what exactly generates the Sag A* observables have not fossilized yet). There are still large uncertainties about the exact structure of our own galaxy, but the (cosmological) Copernican principle is alive and well in that area of galactic astronomy since galaxy zoos are full of various subtypes of dusty spirals.
  - gus_massa 7y ago
    I remember from the original serie Cosmo that the Milky way "had" no bars. I found it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-OdJmAefOY&t=13m51s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-OdJmAefOY&t=13m51s I was very surprised to know the "change" a few years ago. I understand that they were using the best models available at that time, and with better equipment it was posible to get a better model so the image got outdated.

DavidHm 7y ago

See, I wasn't sure whether that's a typo or the way an AI would refer to us.

EvanAnderson 7y ago
They're made out of meat: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

gus_massa 7y ago

When I was young the Milky way "was" an spiral galaxy, now it "is" a barred spiral galaxy and the "photo" changed according. :)

raattgift 7y ago
Think of what it "was" when your grandparents were young! In the 1910s, the observables were extremely faint visible-light nebulae, with M13 (Hercules) closely comparable to M33 (Triangulum), although the spiral structure and larger solid angle of the latter was known since 1850: http://www.messier.seds.org/more/m033_rosse.html http://www.messier.seds.org/more/m033_rosse.html (This only about five years after the first known resolution of nebulae into elliptical, spiral, and irregular; at the time the linked sketch was drawn there were enough observations of spiral nebulae to decide that M33 must be one as well). Observations were consistent with an extragalactic but nearby star cluster. Better observations led to an evolution of what, retrospectively, M33 "was": from closely comparable with M13 to more than a hundred times further away (~ 6.8 vs ~ 850kpc), and tens of billions rather than hundreds of thousands of stars. Perhaps it's best to think of "was" and "is" in relation to human observations. (This also comes up whenever someone objects to talking in the present sense about today's observations of objects at kiloparsec distances, as in "Sag A* is noisy today" provoking "no, it was noisy 26 000 years ago!" -- and of course hypotheses about what exactly generates the Sag A* observables have not fossilized yet). There are still large uncertainties about the exact structure of our own galaxy, but the (cosmological) Copernican principle is alive and well in that area of galactic astronomy since galaxy zoos are full of various subtypes of dusty spirals.
- gus_massa 7y ago
  I remember from the original serie Cosmo that the Milky way "had" no bars. I found it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-OdJmAefOY&t=13m51s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-OdJmAefOY&t=13m51s I was very surprised to know the "change" a few years ago. I understand that they were using the best models available at that time, and with better equipment it was posible to get a better model so the image got outdated.