[WikiEN-l] Defeat: Notability is Policy

[Thomas Dalton]

On 03/02/2008, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Feb 3, 2008 10:08 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > What if the hypothetical existence of one is verifiable?
> >
> > If it's verifiable, it isn't hypothetical, is it?
> >
> The hypothesis can be verifiable.

In which case, we're talking about the notability of a hypothesis, not
of a galaxy or an ETI. The hypothesis could have an article, but would
a galaxy that's only claim to notability is being mentioned in this
hypothesis warrant anything more than a redirect to the ariticle on
the hypothesis?

> > > Aren't all galaxies inherently notable?
> >
> > Do you know how many galaxies there are?
>
> Not exactly, no.  I'm pretty sure it's a lot, though.  Of course I'd
> only be referring to the ones we know about!

Well, we need to stick to the observable universe, certainly -
anything outside the observable universe is causally disconnected from
us, so is certainly not notable.

> > It's not practical to have
> > articles on all of them, so I would say they are not inherently
> > notable. Large ones, unusual ones, nearby ones, sure, but all of them?
> > No chance.
> >
> Well, see above.  In the case of galaxies that no one has ever written
> about, the question of "notability" is moot.
>
> http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html
>
> We estimate there are hundreds of billions.  But only 3000 are
> "visible".  I wonder what "visible" means, and I wonder how many are
> "observable".

I think that 3000 is how many there were in the tiny bit of sky they
looked at. I think it's a reference to the Hubble deep field
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_deep_field). The total number of
galaxies in the observable universe is in the billions, certainly.