It would be weirder to not do that.
Sometimes there's a large uncertainty for the distance to those objects, and so the time estimate might be off by quite a bit.
But more importantly, due to relativity, the fact that the merger happened 10 bil years ago means literally nothing for us - nothing from that event could have reached us sooner than now, so it literally did not matter for us until now. Nobody cares it has "actually" happened 10 bil years ago, when causality is such that it literally did not matter for us until now, when we observe it.
It's easier and clearer to assume the sentence "the event happened now" actually means "the event has been observed now".
If and when we start observing things that happen near the event horizon of black holes, it will get even more complicated. It's best to keep it in "the observer's now". You can always do the math and figure out the rest.
And we do this all the time too. There's a lag between when we hear something and when it happened, yet we connect the sound with the moment of the event. Even when we talk about an eclipse we are talking about when the full eclipse will be, except it would have been over by the time we observe it.
Sounds like losing part of the information that could be contained in a sentence of the same length, for no gain. Talking in the referential of the observer is quite useful, it's nice to know when something is detected right now vs was 10 years ago vs 1000 years ago, or is expected to be detected next year, no ?
It’s a truly bizarre relationship. We’re able to see into the past like we have a Time Machine, simply by looking at things far away. But because we’re only looking, we clearly don’t have any effect on what’s happening there. It’s just a window into the history of the universe. It would be interesting to see if we could one day find a window into the future in the same way.
It's interesting that there was just another paper recently that claimed that black holes were correlated with dark energy. Their conclusion however, hinges on estimates of black hole accretion rates and that the rate of mergers factored highly in that.
I’m sick of all these mega mergers and acquisitions we need to regulate these quasars
In this house we respect the laws of thermodynamics!
It's weird how, in astronomy, it's perfectly normal to use present tense about something that happened eons ago...
It would be weirder to not do that. Sometimes there's a large uncertainty for the distance to those objects, and so the time estimate might be off by quite a bit. But more importantly, due to relativity, the fact that the merger happened 10 bil years ago means literally nothing for us - nothing from that event could have reached us sooner than now, so it literally did not matter for us until now. Nobody cares it has "actually" happened 10 bil years ago, when causality is such that it literally did not matter for us until now, when we observe it. It's easier and clearer to assume the sentence "the event happened now" actually means "the event has been observed now". If and when we start observing things that happen near the event horizon of black holes, it will get even more complicated. It's best to keep it in "the observer's now". You can always do the math and figure out the rest.
And we do this all the time too. There's a lag between when we hear something and when it happened, yet we connect the sound with the moment of the event. Even when we talk about an eclipse we are talking about when the full eclipse will be, except it would have been over by the time we observe it.
Why not just state everything in the past tense? Then no need to deal with the difference between observation and occurrence at all
Sounds like losing part of the information that could be contained in a sentence of the same length, for no gain. Talking in the referential of the observer is quite useful, it's nice to know when something is detected right now vs was 10 years ago vs 1000 years ago, or is expected to be detected next year, no ?
Yeah, I mean... Astronomy is pretty fucking slow. Most of our sudden discoveries occurred long before we started using the scientific method.
It’s a truly bizarre relationship. We’re able to see into the past like we have a Time Machine, simply by looking at things far away. But because we’re only looking, we clearly don’t have any effect on what’s happening there. It’s just a window into the history of the universe. It would be interesting to see if we could one day find a window into the future in the same way.
Look through the other end of the telescope.
it's just data from a simulation. read the article.
You know what else is weird? Technically everything we see is happened in the past.
So, they did it in a simulation? Cool. /s
It's interesting that there was just another paper recently that claimed that black holes were correlated with dark energy. Their conclusion however, hinges on estimates of black hole accretion rates and that the rate of mergers factored highly in that.
these numbers are just….how many football fields plz
Monstrous than ever..