Talk:3066: Cosmic Distance Calibration

yay. DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 16:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

What makes such labels as real objects absurd is not the required size, but the required orientation to be readable from a single point in the universe - earth. 172.71.154.9 19:26, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

All facing towards us AND all the right way up! That's geographically unlikely.  ;-) Robert Carnegie [email protected] 172.71.178.157 10:11, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

A straightforward application of the Anthropic principle. 104.23.187.189 19:35, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure I get the title text... 162.158.62.162 20:04, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I like this part of the linked article: But cosmologists get only one universe to observe. -- Hkmaly (talk) 20:09, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that the crosshairs in question are markers to indicate which star is being labeled, not anything to do with video games. 162.158.137.59 23:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

That's my suspicion as well: just markers like the labels, not diffraction spikes or anything like that. BunsenH (talk) 03:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

The crosshairs are all the same size because new red giant stars are all the same brightness. They are "TRGB" or "Tip of the Red Giant Branch" standard candles. Every star in that phase of evolution is exactly the same absolute brightness, so we can tell how far away it is by measuring the observed luminosity. 162.158.212.132 00:35, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

2035: Dark Matter Candidates also hypothesizes that astronomical labels are physically there, the orbit paths in this case. Should it be added? Intara (talk) 00:43, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

OH MY GOD! Why are there two blue boxes saying we need to complete 58 explanations? I would suggest that just one would be less distracting/disruptive. 172.68.2.70 03:19, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps one box wasn't enough... although it seems reasonable to have an increasing number of cartoons that nobody felt able to explain. Robert Carnegie [email protected] 172.70.91.29 10:15, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree. I put the second box it in on request at an earlier time, when it said something different. But have now removed the top box. That there are 60+ incomplete explanations can still be seen from the one I left. --Kynde (talk) 08:39, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately that second box didn't have the desired effect, it just resulted in some removals of incomplete notices without the issues being fixed. --FaviFake (talk) 09:15, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the crosshairs: TBH, I don't think the comic refers to diffraction patterns/spikes. I think it simply refers to literal crosshairs, as in "some stars are marked with crosshairs in this image and the astronomers think those crosshairs are some kind of real, physical phenomena". See the comic itself for an example of such a crosshair (the zoomed star has one!). --172.68.7.138 05:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

After noticing that other comments in this discussion page mentioned the same as I did, I took the liberty to update the text. --172.68.12.34 05:48, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

This comic seems extra ironic, given that NASA has been grossly misreporting the distances to extremely distant objects lately, due to lack of adjustment for observed differences in spacetime, in order to express things "simply". Most people of course don't care & those using more reliable resources are unaffected, but hobbyists & reporters etc are going "Wait, what? Those numbers are way off..." ProphetZarquon (talk) 14:16, 22 March 2025 (UTC)