Comment Mapping data to theory vs. "seeing" (Score 3, Insightful) 69
Whenever I see news like that, it reminds me that we're not really "seeing" anything. We just get tons of astronomic data, basically piles of photons and neutrinos and muons and god knows what, with different frequencies and spins and all that. Then we take that data, and start working towards mapping it all onto our continuously evolving and obviously imperfect theory what all that actually means.
So astronomers in the end decide what the data means, and then you have these sensationalist articles in the media about "the things we see".
Over time, theories will change, data will prove to be imperfect or contain some margin of error previously unaccounted for, etc, etc.
So articles like this are quite meaningless. There is real data with real impact on the theory, but it's also very likely that data like that will over the long term change the theory and our understanding of the universe, with the sensationalist concepts of "giant black hole eating up whole galaxy" simply dying the way of the dodo.
Good job astronomers for expanding the human knowledge! But let's take the sensationalist sentences with a grain of doubt.....