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Negative_Gravitas t1_je0qrdz wrote

Reply to comment by Andromeda321 in Fast radio burst linked with gravitational waves for the first time by spsheridan

This is exactly the information I clicked in looking for. Thank you.

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johnla t1_je2a60u wrote

Yea.... me too.. I totally understood all of that. Why don't you ELI5 for the people who don't understand it. Unlike you and me. HAHA. Because we understand it completely.

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loulan t1_je1gmyc wrote

On the one hand there is a paper published in Nature Astronomy, but on the other hand, there is this guy on reddit who said "astronomer here".

Case closed I guess, the guy on reddit sounded really confident.

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clayt6 t1_je1k2sj wrote

Just for the record, Andromeda321 is a postdoctoral fellow in astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who specializes in radio astronomy, so I really would take what she has to say seriously. The researchers behind this new study also acknowledge at the end of the article there's a 5% chance that the apparent connection between the FRB and the gravitational waves is entirely a coincidence, which is pretty darn significant (and possibly up for debate). I believe that's the main point she wanted to make.

If a causal connection is confirmed, these results are very intriguing and fascinating. But as is often the case in science, independent and more exhaustive confirmation is key before we get too excited.

With that being said, you're definitely not wrong to be skeptical of a seemingly random redditor's claim lol

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loulan t1_je1kive wrote

I have a permanent research position myself (not in astronomy) and I sure hope people take what I say on reddit with a grain of salt, even when it's in my field haha.

The comment above just sounded way too convinced to me. Especially since they obviously read the comment, but not the paper...

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Negative_Gravitas t1_je1lmoz wrote

On the one hand, there is an honest endeavor to seek more information about a particular question and being grateful for receiving that information (from a very likely reliable source) without drawing any conclusion as to the question's final resolution, but on the other hand, there is snark and completely baseless assumptions about a stranger's state of mind. Case definitely closed.

But you're right, and it's kind of amazing: even without the slightest shred of evidence, that guy on Reddit surely did sound really confident about what I was thinking.

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pikabuddy11 t1_je29va2 wrote

On another hand we used to always joke in my graduate astronomy department that if an article was published in Nature then it was wrong.

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