On 03/02/2008, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
On Feb 3, 2008 10:08 AM, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)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.