Talk:Milky Way
The SEUS Juan looks at the sky was motivated by the linkage between the Milky Way and what happened to the Inca Empire.
An interesting question is which Spain to link to. The Spanish Empire is a better link than the article about modern spain. So do we link that directly, or redirect it to History of Spain where the interaction with the Inca Empire will be explained? Or do we just say [[Pizarro], not "Spain", did the invasion, and count on Pizarro to explain the connection to the Empire? That last seems like the best way, but if so, it kind of implies not Spain but just this one guy did the job. Which isn't right.
Galaxy should not redirect here. A general article on galaxys should be there, and more specific information on the Milky Way should be here. It is arrogant to think that the only galaxy that matters is ours, and that is what is implied by this redirect. -- Tango
- It is also arrogant to think that a bunch of bits of light that can only be seen in an extremely powerful telescope, matter at all, compared to the kind of things discussed at Milky Way (asteroids, astrological portents which almost all cultures believe in). I see your point. However, it's weak. The Simple English Users look up at the sky, they see a bright band of stars, they wonder about it, and, they hear the word "galaxy". This is all one concept. This galaxy is not the only one that "matters" to God, but to the Users...? What is the point of a one-liner dictionary definition of galaxy? Do you really expect a huge astrophysics section here that would actually have to get into the details of the gravity and structure of galaxies? If so, you may write that, and I agree that should go in galaxy and not Milky Way.
- Since when have all simple english users been stupid? Just because they don't speak good english doesn't mean they can't understand what is, to be frank, a very simple concept.
- It's not about stupidity. It's about the astrophysics concept of a galaxy being invisible to the naked eye, irrelevant to daily life, and not how the concept is directly experienced. One is not stupid not to believe things said by those with PhDs in astrophysics from Western universities... one would be stupid in general to believe what PhDs from Western universities say about *anything*.
- Why can't a simple english user be interested in astrophysics? Just because you don't know enough to write an article on a topic doesn't mean you should forget that topic exists at all and just redirect it to something more familiar. -- Tango
- "You don't know enough"? Pardon, who wrote models of our universe, fecund universes, Milky Way itself? I know more than a bit about this. And, if you read SEUS Juan looks at the sky, you'll see I am more than a bit sympathetic to the simple English user who cares about the subject. It's one of the few truly universal subjects that all cultures have wondered about. Now asking them to just abandon that knowledge and accept a strict separation of what can be seen in the sky vs. a telescope, is a kind of serious error, the kind that got Galileo on the wrong side of the Pope. Why repeat it? We can deal adequately here with both sides of the Milky Way. If you want a big article on other galaxies, fine, that's a good place to actually get into this issue of what is seen in a telescope (only). But no one sane thinks of their own galaxy the same way.
- Galileo made no mistake, he simply got his priorities right. He choose truth over what was easy to accept.
- No, he chose empirical methods over moral authority as a way to seek the truth. That works for mechanics, and the Church gave him no trouble over that, notice. But when one mocks moral authority on the excuse of bits seen only through a single device... There's a whole book on this, Galileo's Mistake. You cannot see "truth" in a telescope, not even in astrophysics. This is bias. The Pope of the time strongly supported Galileo's research, to up but not including the point where he drew analogies between moral and physical "research". That's what Galileo got shut down for - he was arguing moral relativism. Based on bits he saw in a telescope... hmm...
- Anyway, there are other galaxies that can be seen with the naked eye, the Magellanic (sp?) clouds, for example. They are only visible in the southern hemisphere, but i think quite a few SEU are from the SH. What the PhDs say about galaxies is not really open to debate, obviously it isn't proven, but then neither is gravity. -- Tango
- What is seen from Earth is the Magellanic clouds, so talk about that, and say they "are" other galaxies since that is not DISPUTED (everything is "open to debate", you are showing a bias here as bad or worse than the old Church scholasticists, not even in the other direction but in favour of "the doctors" ;-)). Physical phenomena aren't "proven", ever, that's a concept that applies only in mathematics. There are models of our universe that to our knowledge can't be invalidated by empirical methods. Choosing between those is a matter of choice. Gravity is an interesting case, since Einstein explains that it is a cognitive phenomena arising from where we inspect it. So the "proof" would be of the consistency the human cognitive system "must" in some sense apply to measurements of attractions between masses. The whole game moved inside with relativity. Einstein himself said so: "You sit by a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. You sit in a boring lecture for a minute, it seems like an hour. That's relativity." His interpreters have so far failed to understand that he really was talking about the cognitive system, and was not "wrong" or necessarily "in conflict" with quantum mechanics. The error arises in trying to build GUTs with physics alone... rather like Galileo's error of trying to do that for the universe. MANY scientists now side with the Pope on this not Galileo.
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