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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

"To me, the coolest thing about this story is the telescope that was used to find this galaxy."

Uh, we just found out a new principle on the large scale organization of matter in the known universe. The method is surely inspirational, but I really have to question your statement that the method of discovery credits more merit than the discovery itself.

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Relax. It's just, like, my opinion man.

Sure, sorry, you did state "to me". English is not my native language and nuances sometimes escape me. The jury rigged ground based telescope is cool.

No worries. Just so you know, I'll take any opportunity to deliver a Big Lebowski reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsogswrH6ck

Consider yourself warned.

> we just found out a new principle on the large scale organization of matter in the known universe.

Not really, because we've already knew that and observed it before in the bullet galaxy. This is just a 2nd observation (although it is interesting in the ways it's different).

I didn’t even know that dark matter was anything more than theoretical.

That depends on how ready you are to dismiss the existing observational evidence for it. While it's by no means proven to exist, it's not something predicted by theory, so it's unfair to call it that. Supersymmetry, for example, is purely theoretical; whereas dark matter is a response to observations that contradict theory.

That is an engineering mindset. I was confused when I first read a review of the "Apollo 13" movie that said engineers think the real heroes of the crises were the engineers on the ground - who else would someone think was a hero? Oh yeah, the astronauts who were risking their lives.

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