Comments on: Galaxies are like people

By: sites of the week 13.10-19.10 2008 « open ended

sites of the week 13.10-19.10 2008 « open ended — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:50:44 +0000

[...] Galaxies are Like People interesting… bet you never thought about it like that [...]

By: ts

ts — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:39:39 +0000

Galaxies are like great stripteasers — they know how not to reveal all the way in order to titillate and sustain the desires of those who want to know and see all the way.

By: Brief Saturday Starlinks | Mike Brotherton: SF Writer

Brief Saturday Starlinks | Mike Brotherton: SF Writer — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:59:15 +0000

[...] Galaxies are like people? [Cosmic Variance] [...]

By: Kai

Kai — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:44:12 +0000

I just. can’t. stop.

Compact blue galaxies are like celebrity look-a-likes, they’re often mistaken for stars.

By: Kai

Kai — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:37:39 +0000

I’ve got more, these ones not as good:

Galaxies are like moderns, drifting away from each other faster and faster.

Galaxies are like honors students, if they weren’t always moving they would collapse.

By: Kai

Kai — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:27:32 +0000

Galaxies are like people, 90% of them you can never ever see.

Galaxies are like lovers, when two collide it’s a long drawn out mess. Three is absolute chaos.

Galaxies are like political pundits, you only see the loudest due to malmquist bias.

Rupert Murdoch is like a cD galaxy, once it gets a taste it can’t help but gobble up everything in sight.

Galaxy mergers are like American party politics, it’s only the hot gas that collides.

Galaxies are like people, the majority aren’t very bright.

By: Tod R. Lauer

Tod R. Lauer — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:47:36 +0000

The quote about the “normal” properties of galaxies and people comes from Virginia Trimble in 1986 at the two-week “Nearly Normal Galaxies” workshop in Santa Cruz, which was led by Sandy Faber. I had thought that the title was somewhat ignorant, as at the time there was a tremendous explosion in what we were learning about galaxies, and what ever we had thought “normal” was was based on old and poorly informed ideas. It was clear that Virginia was having none of this, and she started off a session that she was chairing with the words, “Normal is somebody you don’t know very well.” or something very close to this. I was delighted by this very direct expression of what I was feeling, and have used it many many times in the 22 years since then…

By: James

James — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:26:12 +0000

Or, taking a variation on the above…

“If galaxies weren’t people, seems like an awful waste of space.”

Thank you!

By: Paul Duffield

Paul Duffield — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:12:28 +0000

Galaxies are like people, they’re mostly empty space!

By: Adrian Burd

Adrian Burd — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:51:01 +0000

Julianne,

If the quote had been something like “Galaxies are like people, their character is a mix of nature and nurture”, then it would have worked. Use of the word genetics causes the reader to stretch the meaning of the word too far. Just as physicists get (rightly) annoyed at biologists/amateur philosophers and others who abuse the terminology of that subject, biologists and geneticists react likewise. Some uses of terminology (like the descriptions of Gladstone that John shared) are suitable, some are not. As a theoretical physicist who works a lot with biologists, I found myself wondering what the mRNA is, where are the GACT bases etc. To me, and I suspect most biologists, the original phrase causes only a strong jarring sensation
rather than a “oh yes, I can see how that works” reaction. So I stick by my original claim, that particular example was a bad analogy.

Adrian