6 ms·

I mean.. you would expect to see rings sometimes if this is a random noise kind of distribution no?

by boxed 2y ago

sapling-ginger 2y ago
Supposedly if you scan the sky long enough, you'd find a copy of Shakespeare's play written in the stars.
- 0xedd 2y ago
  Why? It's not random.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  The upper estimate of the number of galaxies in the observable universe is 2 trillion, which is far too few to find Shakespeare written with "galaxy dots".
  - jjk166 2y ago
    There are an infinite number of ways to ascribe meaning to galaxy dots such that they would write out Shakespeare.
    - The_Colonel 2y ago
      Can you propose one which doesn't use massive lookup tables?
      - jjk166 2y ago
        Writing Shakespeare in English requires a pretty massive look up table - we call it a dictionary.
        The_Colonel 2y ago
        No, you don't need a massive dictionary. Remember that the topic of this thread is a circle composed of galaxy "dots". An elongated circle can be the letter O or perhaps zero. You can similarly compose other letters visually using galaxy dots, and that's presumably what the original poster meant when talking about writing out a Shakespeare. If the universe was infinite, this would be a possibility.
roenxi 2y ago
Yeah, maybe. Certainly a theory. But that artist impression has 24 dots, so the odds of getting a circle might be the same as getting a well drawn rabbit, or a "lol :)" (pencilling it out 24 dots seems reasonable for a "lol :)"). But the fact we got a circle rather than something funny suggests it is probably a phenomenon that causes circles responsible. Circles are far more common in nature than statistics might suggest. Nature well knows circles.
- boxed 2y ago
  I mean.. this could be a circle just from our point of view if the distance measurements are off for a bunch of them...
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Why would it matter if that were true or not?
mr_mitm 2y ago
Yes, that is why the scientists did a statistical analysis, otherwise it wouldn't be worthy of publication. From the arXiv paper: > Using the Convex Hull of Member Spheres (CHMS) algorithm, we estimate that the annulus and inner absorbers of the BR have departures from random expectations, at the density of the control field, of up to 5.2σ. 5 sigma is the gold standard at which we can safely exclude the noise explanation.
- Lammy1 2y ago
  The artist impression in the article is heavily misleading IMHO. The actual "ring" is much more jagged and looks very similar to all the nearby so called "filaments" they labeled. I'm not sure if it's crossing the threshold from constellation-ism to real astronomy. Download the arXiv paper and see for yourself.
pwatsonwailes 2y ago
Structures yes, but not at this sort of scale. For reasons*, there's a soft limit on the scale that you'd expect structures** to scale to. There's no technical reason why they can't get bigger, it just becomes spectacularly unlikely that you'd ever get one. The fact that we've found two so far means 1. There's probably more we haven't found yet, and thus they're probably*** more common than we'd expect, and 2. There may be some mechanism we don't yet understand which leads to the emergence of astronomical structures at this sort of scale. * Actually quite interesting reasons, but which take a lot of maths to explain that I'm not going in to here. ** In this case, defined as a thing or set of things in a mathematically simple shape - spheres, rings etc. *** Assuming any bit of the universe is roughly like any other bits, and we didn't just happen to fluke on literally the only place where these exist, and there's two.
- fsloth 2y ago
  Can you give references on the *reasons? Would love to try to do some maths reading in a long while.
  - pwatsonwailes 2y ago
    If you want to do some research on the subject, you're looking for violations of homogeneity, as implied by the Lambda-CDM model of the universe. The lambda in this case is the cosmological constant. You'll need to read up on that too. The shortest, simplest way I can think to explain it is that we expect the universe to look alike, anywhere we look. Think of it like a biopsy - we assume that anywhere we look should be much like anywhere else, because there's no reason to think any area of the universe has special conditions where physics plays by different rules. That sets up some implications around what we think the universe should look like, at different scales. However, we recently have been running into structures which are bigger than we'd expect. Where we get into the maths is to do with the value of the cosmological constant. We currently think it's positive, because the universe is expanding, and its rate of expansion is accelerating. To look into the maths for this, have a Google around the maths behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.
- moralestapia 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

I mean.. you would expect to see rings sometimes if this is a random noise kind of distribution no?

by boxed 2y ago

I mean.. you would expect to see rings sometimes if this is a random noise kind of distribution no?

sapling-ginger 2y ago

Supposedly if you scan the sky long enough, you'd find a copy of Shakespeare's play written in the stars.

0xedd 2y ago
Why? It's not random.
The_Colonel 2y ago
The upper estimate of the number of galaxies in the observable universe is 2 trillion, which is far too few to find Shakespeare written with "galaxy dots".
- jjk166 2y ago
  There are an infinite number of ways to ascribe meaning to galaxy dots such that they would write out Shakespeare.
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    Can you propose one which doesn't use massive lookup tables?
    - jjk166 2y ago
      Writing Shakespeare in English requires a pretty massive look up table - we call it a dictionary.
      - The_Colonel 2y ago
        No, you don't need a massive dictionary. Remember that the topic of this thread is a circle composed of galaxy "dots". An elongated circle can be the letter O or perhaps zero. You can similarly compose other letters visually using galaxy dots, and that's presumably what the original poster meant when talking about writing out a Shakespeare. If the universe was infinite, this would be a possibility.

roenxi 2y ago

Yeah, maybe. Certainly a theory. But that artist impression has 24 dots, so the odds of getting a circle might be the same as getting a well drawn rabbit, or a "lol :)" (pencilling it out 24 dots seems reasonable for a "lol :)"). But the fact we got a circle rather than something funny suggests it is probably a phenomenon that causes circles responsible. Circles are far more common in nature than statistics might suggest. Nature well knows circles.

boxed 2y ago
I mean.. this could be a circle just from our point of view if the distance measurements are off for a bunch of them...
- roenxi 2y ago
  Why would it matter if that were true or not?

mr_mitm 2y ago

Yes, that is why the scientists did a statistical analysis, otherwise it wouldn't be worthy of publication. From the arXiv paper: > Using the Convex Hull of Member Spheres (CHMS) algorithm, we estimate that the annulus and inner absorbers of the BR have departures from random expectations, at the density of the control field, of up to 5.2σ. 5 sigma is the gold standard at which we can safely exclude the noise explanation.

Lammy1 2y ago
The artist impression in the article is heavily misleading IMHO. The actual "ring" is much more jagged and looks very similar to all the nearby so called "filaments" they labeled. I'm not sure if it's crossing the threshold from constellation-ism to real astronomy. Download the arXiv paper and see for yourself.

pwatsonwailes 2y ago

Structures yes, but not at this sort of scale. For reasons*, there's a soft limit on the scale that you'd expect structures** to scale to. There's no technical reason why they can't get bigger, it just becomes spectacularly unlikely that you'd ever get one. The fact that we've found two so far means 1. There's probably more we haven't found yet, and thus they're probably*** more common than we'd expect, and 2. There may be some mechanism we don't yet understand which leads to the emergence of astronomical structures at this sort of scale. * Actually quite interesting reasons, but which take a lot of maths to explain that I'm not going in to here. ** In this case, defined as a thing or set of things in a mathematically simple shape - spheres, rings etc. *** Assuming any bit of the universe is roughly like any other bits, and we didn't just happen to fluke on literally the only place where these exist, and there's two.

fsloth 2y ago
Can you give references on the *reasons? Would love to try to do some maths reading in a long while.
- pwatsonwailes 2y ago
  If you want to do some research on the subject, you're looking for violations of homogeneity, as implied by the Lambda-CDM model of the universe. The lambda in this case is the cosmological constant. You'll need to read up on that too. The shortest, simplest way I can think to explain it is that we expect the universe to look alike, anywhere we look. Think of it like a biopsy - we assume that anywhere we look should be much like anywhere else, because there's no reason to think any area of the universe has special conditions where physics plays by different rules. That sets up some implications around what we think the universe should look like, at different scales. However, we recently have been running into structures which are bigger than we'd expect. Where we get into the maths is to do with the value of the cosmological constant. We currently think it's positive, because the universe is expanding, and its rate of expansion is accelerating. To look into the maths for this, have a Google around the maths behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.
moralestapia 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]