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It has actually become somewhat cultlike. I watched someone on twitter get completely torn apart for asking the very reasonable and scientific question: "What w

It has actually become somewhat cultlike. I watched someone on twitter get completely torn apart for asking the very reasonable and scientific question: "What will we learn from this telescope?". They got absolutely demolished, people going through his tweets and personal details and making fun of him. I decided to ask a few of them what new stuff we expect to learn about the universe using this new telescope. Only one person managed to answer me, and they were not one of the people to mock the original guy. My impression is that people don't have a clue of why we want to do this, in fact, a lot of them explicitly seem to think that the high-res image in the press release was the main point. $10b projects don't get launched simply just for the reason "why not?", they have purpose and intention behind them. It is an interesting look into how the general public relate to science, compared to how scientists relate to it. For a scientist, "why are we doing this?" is one of the very first questions you would ask, not something to be mocked EDIT: I want to point out that I am a physicist and technically an astronomy (GW interferometry) myself, so I know that there are answers to these questions. I just think that it's interesting how not only do people not know the answers to them, but they think it is rude to ask. I can't reply to comments, as I'm rate limited.

danjoredd 4y ago
Their first mistake was using Twitter. Twitter actively encourages people being toxic to each other since that is what gets the most likes. I remember back when I used it was during the Pewdiepie vs T-Series meme, and people kept calling me a fascist just because I watched his videos.
dougmwne 4y ago
I had the absolute privilege to regularly attending lectures at the DC air and space museum. These were held partly as an educational tool for congressional staffers, to demonstrate the hard value of NASA science mission funding. They were deep yet accessible. We get so much out of our science funding! These missions do have primary science goals and in order to book time on the instruments, proposals are submitted and prioritized accordingly. The science being done is absolutely wild stuff, formation of new planets, stars, universe and everything. With a telescope like this you can watch the evolution of all matter in the universe, from near the beginning of time up to now in all its trillions of permutations. You get this amazing data on everything and can spend decades analyzing it for new insights and models. Twitter and the general population understands none of this, but NASA understands that a few pretty pictures will keep the funding flowing. But what thing could we learn that will really wow folks? Composition of exoplanet atmospheres, of course. Class M planet detected!
boeingUH60 4y ago
I mean, it's Twitter. What else do you expect from an app with a significant user base of frankly frustrated people looking to pour out their lack of happiness with their lives on others?
- bowsamic 4y ago
  This might be surprising, but a vast majority of casual science discussion among scientists from different research groups takes place on twitter
NegativeLatency 4y ago
Twitter is the ultimate out of context anger generation machine, so that's probably to be expected. It drives user engagement after all. There’s a pretty good explanation in this documentary: https://www.pbs.org/video/ultimate-space-telescope-gunryt/ https://www.pbs.org/video/ultimate-space-telescope-gunryt/

danjoredd 4y ago

Their first mistake was using Twitter. Twitter actively encourages people being toxic to each other since that is what gets the most likes. I remember back when I used it was during the Pewdiepie vs T-Series meme, and people kept calling me a fascist just because I watched his videos.

dougmwne 4y ago

I had the absolute privilege to regularly attending lectures at the DC air and space museum. These were held partly as an educational tool for congressional staffers, to demonstrate the hard value of NASA science mission funding. They were deep yet accessible. We get so much out of our science funding! These missions do have primary science goals and in order to book time on the instruments, proposals are submitted and prioritized accordingly. The science being done is absolutely wild stuff, formation of new planets, stars, universe and everything. With a telescope like this you can watch the evolution of all matter in the universe, from near the beginning of time up to now in all its trillions of permutations. You get this amazing data on everything and can spend decades analyzing it for new insights and models. Twitter and the general population understands none of this, but NASA understands that a few pretty pictures will keep the funding flowing. But what thing could we learn that will really wow folks? Composition of exoplanet atmospheres, of course. Class M planet detected!

boeingUH60 4y ago

I mean, it's Twitter. What else do you expect from an app with a significant user base of frankly frustrated people looking to pour out their lack of happiness with their lives on others?

bowsamic 4y ago
This might be surprising, but a vast majority of casual science discussion among scientists from different research groups takes place on twitter

NegativeLatency 4y ago

Twitter is the ultimate out of context anger generation machine, so that's probably to be expected. It drives user engagement after all. There’s a pretty good explanation in this documentary: https://www.pbs.org/video/ultimate-space-telescope-gunryt/ https://www.pbs.org/video/ultimate-space-telescope-gunryt/