8 ms·

your "if it's so obvious why didn't they predict it?" question is a result of the way that the article is written which, in turn, is a consequence of the depend

your "if it's so obvious why didn't they predict it?" question is a result of the way that the article is written which, in turn, is a consequence of the dependency of nasa (and astronomy and space research in general) on public goodwill to motivate funding. this isn't so exciting, and it isn't so shocking. it's a standing joke in astronomy / astrophysics that magnetic fields are complicated and misunderstood. whenever something can't be explained it's attributed to tangled magnetic fields. so complexity in the magnetic field - this "foam" - would not be a great shock. i have a phd in astronomy. one reason i left the field (apart from the small matter of being a pretty crappy astronomer) was that i felt it was a fraud. sure, it wastes much less money than the arms program and, yes, we do have non-stick pans now, but everything you see from the field is presented in a sexed-up, over-sold, exaggerated way to get more funding.

colkassad 15y ago
Wow. Astronomy has always been my dream job so this view is surprising to me. What areas do feel are most exaggerated? Is dark energy a bunch of crap for instance? EDIT: My last sentences sounds snarky in retrospect...I meant do you feel that something like dark energy is played up.
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  well, my views are probably at one extreme of the spectrum. dark matter and dark energy are both real problems. my beef isn't with the facts, but how they are presented. for example, i am very skeptical that understanding those will have any major practical consequences (the argument being that they are only significant on astronomical scales - if they were somehow available / useful / practical at human scales then they would be much easier to study). the "poetic" value of "understanding our universe" is something separate, of course. most astronomers i know (and i know a lot - my partner is a prof at u chile; chile has a lot of telescopes) love what they do. the thing that they dislike most is the extreme pressure for jobs - there are many more grads and postdocs than there are permanent positions. if you're considering a career in astronomy i would weigh that much more than my (cranky) opinions on funding. (also, you realise that going observing is not sexy? you're sat in a room somewhere, surrounded by computers, with no windows and a bunch of engineers, so tired that you've got mouth ulcers, eating crap food to stay awake as nothing much happens for hours on end. and the meaning of your data won't be clear until you've done a year more of processing and analysis... :o) ps the most over-sold field currently is planets: very popular; very sexy ("human inhabitable" etc etc); largely pointless. the "dark" problems are at least physics, rather than stamp collecting.
  - colkassad 15y ago
    Astronomy is just a dream of mine since childhood...I'm 38 now and set in my career path more or less. I agree with you that professional astronomy is probably not very sexy. My interest lies in the large scale stuff like quasars, galaxy formation, and the physics underlying neutron stars and black holes. For some reason exoplanets don't do it for me. Thanks for the reply...it was very interesting.
    - kirubakaran 15y ago
      "I'm 38 now and set in my career path more or less" Fun exercise: Sit down. Think you just died. Like now. Just turn that around in your mind until it sinks in. Watch (hopefully) many of the rationalizations for your choices fall off. Repeat.
      - colkassad 15y ago
        Sorry, that probably sounded defeatist or something. I meant that I am doing something now that I love, and working towards improving my life through this route. I have many dreams, more than a lifetime's worth :P
  - bh42222 15y ago
    the thing that they dislike most is the extreme pressure for jobs - there are many more grads and postdocs than there are permanent positions So its like every other position in academia then? Also like most private sector jobs in a recession/depression. Really having more opening then applicants is a rarity. Engineers, doctors, some other high demand professions, are all a minority in terms of total labor force in the economy.
    - andrewcooke 15y ago
      you can have many applicants per job even with full employment. my understanding is that astronomy is one of the more competitive areas within academia, but i don't have any figures.
DanI-S 15y ago
Incidentally, did you manage to find a career in a field where things aren't oversold in the pursuit of popular enthusiasm? It seems a fundamental component of capitalism, if not human enterprise in general.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  sorry, previous reply mis-understood your question. this is the same point as the pressure for jobs, really. it's not that astronomy is the only place where things are oversold, or where there's a lot of competition for jobs - it's a question of degree. in the case of astronomy it doesn't produce much at all of quantifiable physical value. it's not that different to poetry (you can make the same "life-affirming" arguments for both). in contrast, car mechanics, say, do something physically useful: they fix your car and you're willing to pay them for that. so astronomers and poets are, largely, state funded (through science and arts grants, respectively). you could, i guess, argue that a car mechanic who places an advert in the local paper is also relying on "over-selling". sure. but i hope you'll agree there's a difference in degree between the two cases: the mechanic is, say, 90% useful, 10% "ephemeral"; astronomy is 99% "ephemeral" [edit: made phrasing less abrasive]. in modern universities, most depts have a range of sources of funding. it's very unusual for astronomy depts to have links with industry because they don't produce anything that people want (there are engineering-related exceptions for optics and detectors). the way they get money is by being cool and hoping to appear attractive to rich donors (or the govt). hence the reliance on "advertising". ps and to reply directly: yes; i now work on projects that help save people's lives.
  - DanI-S 15y ago
    I'd argue that astronomy does save lives! It does it through inspiring people to become more educated, and giving them a greater perspective on the nature of our world. Hopefully, that helps limit future conflict, warfare and environmental destruction. This is probably not as direct as what you do now, though. I am glad you have found something that works better for you :)
lutorm 15y ago
Lately, I've been feeling more of this. I work in numerical simulations of galaxies, and I feel like people are just running simulations and writing papers without bothering to check things like sensitivity to the parametrized recipes for unresolved physics. What really irks me is that when you really do worry about these things, you just look like someone who can't produce compared to these people who are getting jobs without any repercussions from flip-flopping their results every couple of years. Because these simulations can be compared to reality only in very tangential ways, it's like there is no need to worry about being wrong...
anigbrowl 15y ago
Since you're here, how is this distinct from the 'foaminess' visible in a newtbasin [1], if at all? 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_fractal also enormously fun to do with chains of actual magnets
gammarator 15y ago
"Fraud" is far too strong, to me. Many people are naturally interested in astronomy (when was the last time you saw a HN article about condensed matter physics, or epidemiology?), and popular articles like this provide a short-term return on their investment. As to the sexing up/over-selling, competition for scarce resources is the very definition of an incentive. The grant funding system has plenty of flaws, but the fact that research is funded through competition a) increases its quality and b) doesn't remove the intrinsic value of its results.

colkassad 15y ago

Wow. Astronomy has always been my dream job so this view is surprising to me. What areas do feel are most exaggerated? Is dark energy a bunch of crap for instance? EDIT: My last sentences sounds snarky in retrospect...I meant do you feel that something like dark energy is played up.

andrewcooke 15y ago
well, my views are probably at one extreme of the spectrum. dark matter and dark energy are both real problems. my beef isn't with the facts, but how they are presented. for example, i am very skeptical that understanding those will have any major practical consequences (the argument being that they are only significant on astronomical scales - if they were somehow available / useful / practical at human scales then they would be much easier to study). the "poetic" value of "understanding our universe" is something separate, of course. most astronomers i know (and i know a lot - my partner is a prof at u chile; chile has a lot of telescopes) love what they do. the thing that they dislike most is the extreme pressure for jobs - there are many more grads and postdocs than there are permanent positions. if you're considering a career in astronomy i would weigh that much more than my (cranky) opinions on funding. (also, you realise that going observing is not sexy? you're sat in a room somewhere, surrounded by computers, with no windows and a bunch of engineers, so tired that you've got mouth ulcers, eating crap food to stay awake as nothing much happens for hours on end. and the meaning of your data won't be clear until you've done a year more of processing and analysis... :o) ps the most over-sold field currently is planets: very popular; very sexy ("human inhabitable" etc etc); largely pointless. the "dark" problems are at least physics, rather than stamp collecting.
- colkassad 15y ago
  Astronomy is just a dream of mine since childhood...I'm 38 now and set in my career path more or less. I agree with you that professional astronomy is probably not very sexy. My interest lies in the large scale stuff like quasars, galaxy formation, and the physics underlying neutron stars and black holes. For some reason exoplanets don't do it for me. Thanks for the reply...it was very interesting.
  - kirubakaran 15y ago
    "I'm 38 now and set in my career path more or less" Fun exercise: Sit down. Think you just died. Like now. Just turn that around in your mind until it sinks in. Watch (hopefully) many of the rationalizations for your choices fall off. Repeat.
    - colkassad 15y ago
      Sorry, that probably sounded defeatist or something. I meant that I am doing something now that I love, and working towards improving my life through this route. I have many dreams, more than a lifetime's worth :P
- bh42222 15y ago
  the thing that they dislike most is the extreme pressure for jobs - there are many more grads and postdocs than there are permanent positions So its like every other position in academia then? Also like most private sector jobs in a recession/depression. Really having more opening then applicants is a rarity. Engineers, doctors, some other high demand professions, are all a minority in terms of total labor force in the economy.
  - andrewcooke 15y ago
    you can have many applicants per job even with full employment. my understanding is that astronomy is one of the more competitive areas within academia, but i don't have any figures.

DanI-S 15y ago

Incidentally, did you manage to find a career in a field where things aren't oversold in the pursuit of popular enthusiasm? It seems a fundamental component of capitalism, if not human enterprise in general.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
andrewcooke 15y ago
sorry, previous reply mis-understood your question. this is the same point as the pressure for jobs, really. it's not that astronomy is the only place where things are oversold, or where there's a lot of competition for jobs - it's a question of degree. in the case of astronomy it doesn't produce much at all of quantifiable physical value. it's not that different to poetry (you can make the same "life-affirming" arguments for both). in contrast, car mechanics, say, do something physically useful: they fix your car and you're willing to pay them for that. so astronomers and poets are, largely, state funded (through science and arts grants, respectively). you could, i guess, argue that a car mechanic who places an advert in the local paper is also relying on "over-selling". sure. but i hope you'll agree there's a difference in degree between the two cases: the mechanic is, say, 90% useful, 10% "ephemeral"; astronomy is 99% "ephemeral" [edit: made phrasing less abrasive]. in modern universities, most depts have a range of sources of funding. it's very unusual for astronomy depts to have links with industry because they don't produce anything that people want (there are engineering-related exceptions for optics and detectors). the way they get money is by being cool and hoping to appear attractive to rich donors (or the govt). hence the reliance on "advertising". ps and to reply directly: yes; i now work on projects that help save people's lives.
- DanI-S 15y ago
  I'd argue that astronomy does save lives! It does it through inspiring people to become more educated, and giving them a greater perspective on the nature of our world. Hopefully, that helps limit future conflict, warfare and environmental destruction. This is probably not as direct as what you do now, though. I am glad you have found something that works better for you :)

lutorm 15y ago

Lately, I've been feeling more of this. I work in numerical simulations of galaxies, and I feel like people are just running simulations and writing papers without bothering to check things like sensitivity to the parametrized recipes for unresolved physics. What really irks me is that when you really do worry about these things, you just look like someone who can't produce compared to these people who are getting jobs without any repercussions from flip-flopping their results every couple of years. Because these simulations can be compared to reality only in very tangential ways, it's like there is no need to worry about being wrong...

anigbrowl 15y ago

Since you're here, how is this distinct from the 'foaminess' visible in a newtbasin [1], if at all? 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_fractal also enormously fun to do with chains of actual magnets

gammarator 15y ago

"Fraud" is far too strong, to me. Many people are naturally interested in astronomy (when was the last time you saw a HN article about condensed matter physics, or epidemiology?), and popular articles like this provide a short-term return on their investment. As to the sexing up/over-selling, competition for scarce resources is the very definition of an incentive. The grant funding system has plenty of flaws, but the fact that research is funded through competition a) increases its quality and b) doesn't remove the intrinsic value of its results.