This Wednesday, scientists reported that the number of stars in the universe has been way under counted. They recently estimated there to be three times as many stars in the universe than people had previously thought. The starts being under counted were a bunch of cool, dim dwarf stars in certain galaxies. “It’s very problematic,” said Pieter Van Dokkum, referring to the facts that this led to the misunderstanding of how galaxies formed and grew over the eons. Astronomers are not actually able to count the number of dwarf stars, which have masses less than a third of the sun in galaxies outside of the milky way. Instead, the astronomers counted the brighter sun-like stars and were able to assume that there were about 100 unseen dwarfs for each larger sun-like star.
I chose this article because I found it to have a lot of interesting information. People don’t usually doubt astronomers and scientists but this article proves that they do make major mistake. They miscounted the number of stars by a huge number which I found to be both astounding and ridiculous.
The author did a very nice job writing this article. Although I really enjoyed reading this, I found some of the information to be pointless. For instance, some of the specific statistics I did not think were needed. Also, I would of liked to know what led the scientists to discover the numerous undiscovered starts in the universe.
2 comments:
On Wednesday, scientists announced that they had underestimated the number of stars in the universe, and in fact there are three times as many as they had thought. This was due to the fact that other galaxies have a different ratio of dwarf stars to stars like the Sun than the Milky Way does. The Milky Way has 100 dwarf stars for every star like the Sun, while most other galaxies have about 1000. This means there are more than three times as many stars as originally estimated. I appreciated learning that there are more than three times as many stars as we thought, because this could play an important role in astronomy. The explanation of how the astronomers were incorrect helped my understanding of the review. It was interesting to learn that the dwarf stars have such a small mass that they need to be estimated. They are actually not seen, but they collectively emit a characteristic light or color fingerprint.
Certain aspects of this review could have been improved. I would have liked more information on how the process of counting the stars worked, as this was not explained. I also think the review was too short, making it harder to understand all the facts.
This article is relevant because the number of stars in the universe is very important to astronomers, and what we know or assume about the universe. This may change our understanding of how life began. Other galaxies may not be the same as our own. Our understanding of astronomy may drastically change with this new information.
1. One thing I liked about this was how Mr. Ippolito expressed his opinions in his article, and I agree that reading all of the statistics would be boring and useless.
2. I also liked how he quoted people from the article it makes his points stronger.
3. I liked how he explained why the article didn’t tell us the exact number of stars there are because they are unable to count all the tiny dwarfs.
1. One thing that I would do to improve this review is make it longer.
2. Also having a few more details and statistics might make it easier to understand however I understand that you were trying to save us from boredom.
1. One thing I learned was how many stars there actually are and the fact that they are even uncountable seems crazy and astounding.
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