Tuxford #fundie

Tuxford #fundie phys.org

"most likely caused by "feedback" activity whereby the AGN injects vast quantities of energy into its host galaxy, creating a powerful wind that sweeps up gas and dust into an expanding super bubble."

Ah, feedback. Another sexy term discovered by ignorant scientists. Still does not explain where all that matter comes from. Instead, they grab on the sexy term in a desperate attempt to explain the unexplainable. Only it is not unexplainable, just not understandable to today's technically uninformed cosmologist, lost in math fantasy models.

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old comment by dxdydz

In pains me to see the word sexy used this way when talking about STEM subjects. The professor I had for analysis and special functions used the word sexy to describe particularly satisfying or clever proofs.

Using a Laplace transform to evaluate the integral of sin(x)/x over R? Sexy.

Using an infinite product for Γ(z) and an infinite product for sin(πz)/(πz) to find the reflection formula for Γ(z)? Sexy.

Using the product and Maclaurin series for sin(z) to evaluate ζ(2n)? Sexy.

Using group theory to solve number theoretic problems like sums over φ(n)? Sexy.

Using the word sexy to push anti-science / anti-math bullshit? Not sexy.

@DarkPhoenix

The dust and gas that forms the bubble is pushed by the radiation pressure created by the active galactic nucleus, it's not gravity. You are correct in saying all the matter was already there though, just floating around in the galaxy essentially.

old comment by Jamaican Castle

There's always going to be a certain amount of guesswork and deduction in astrophysics, simply because we can't (yet?) go into the lab and build our own stars and solar systems and galaxies. If you don't like that, well... study something else, I guess.

Astrophysics being what it is, mathematical models are often far more useful than direct observation. All you get from direct observation is "well, it looks like some light" (or cosmic rays or whatever). Determining whether it fits into a model (or more usually which of several competing models it fits best) is pretty straightforward, but you'd never be able to derive the behavior seen in the model just from the observations.

@dxdydz: I've always preferred the more hackish "elegant" in that context. It's just more... elegant.

Tuxford #fundie phys.org

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