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I never understand why articles like this use present tense to talk about past events. It was churning out a lot of new stars.. not is. I guess the “as seen fr
by natch 6y ago
I never understand why articles like this use present tense to talk about past events. It was churning out a lot of new stars.. not is.
I guess the “as seen from our current vantage point” is understood, but to me the needless emphasis of that perspective just muddies things, no?
Anyone of you downvoters care to enlighten me?
- erulabs 6y agoStrictly speaking our observations are not continuous. We pointed a large array at it and then the array probably went on to other work and looked elsewhere - so technically “was” is more correct, since we do not know what it “is” doing, rather only what it appeared to be doing. Either way it’s a pretty uninteresting difference in tense.
- natch 6y agoI find it a very interesting difference, because it and other fuzzy writing like it has a devastating impact on science literacy, leading to lack of comprehension of concepts. Weak thinking on science in turn contributes to many of the problems we face as societies today.
- svachalek 6y agoOur language tenses weren't really designed for distant space phenomena. Should we say Betelgeuse is a red supergiant or was a red supergiant? When we look at the sky it exists "now" for us and there's no way to know if it's exploded since the light that we're seeing now left its surface. And even if we talk about the light that's leaving it in our "now" that's kind of vague since there's no real universal common clock.