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Study Concludes "Planet" Was Just Stellar Spots

Posted by timothy on from the waste-of-missiles dept.

Kligat writes "Back in January, it was reported that the youngest planet ever to be discovered, about ten times the mass of Jupiter, was orbiting the eight- to ten-million-year-old star TW Hydrae. Now a Spanish research team has concluded that TW Hydrae b doesn't exist, and that cold spots on the star's surface actually produced the dip in brightness instead of a transiting planet. Not as cool as if a planet had actually been there, but refutations are science, too, right?"

2 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. It's Science! by Sir+Holo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is all part of the process of science.

    People are trying to figure out the unknown, and don't always get it right the first time.

    The popular press may spin it differently for the layman, but this is how science works.

    1. Re:It's Science! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You beat me to this point.

      It is very important to be able to see 'cool spots' on stars other than our sun. We don't even understand our solar cycle yet and seeing what goes on on other stars will help us understand our Sun and Earth.

      If this is the first time that this has been observed there should be more hype on this subject. There are many, many people on earth that will take notice and attempt to repeat.

      If this 'spot' is so huge that we can detect it - what would be the ramifications if our sun got the same sized spot?