First Image of a Planet Orbiting a Sun-Like Star

Several readers including houbou and DigitumDei sent links to what may be the first-ever image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star (research paper). The giant planet, the mass of 8 Jupiters, orbits its star at 330 AU, or 11 times the distance to Neptune's orbit. If the imaged object does turn out to be a planet — and it's not certain it is — then theories of planet formation may have to be adjusted. "The bulk of the material from which planets might form is significantly closer to the parent star... The outermost parts of such disks wouldn't contain enough material to assemble a Jupiter-mass planet at the distance from the star... at which the Toronto team found the faint object."

Comments

That's no planet, it's a space station.

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA-

"Apparently, a scientist at the LHC declared that the object is similar to the flash that an Imperial Star Destroyer does when reaching Warp 10.

Re:Low-bandwidth version in case of slashdotting

[jaxtherat]

BEST. ASCII. ART. EVER.

Why do we think we KNOW how it works?

[BitZtream]

Maybe my question is wrong in the first place.

But ... why is it we always seem to think we 'KNOW' how things work? You hear all of this 'it works this way' crap in science, only a year later to hear 'oh it doesn't really work that way, we were right but not really right and now we're definately right' ... until the next time we're wrong.

I'm guessing that its more of media than scientists that cause the problem, but I've had arguments with plenty of 'educated' people who are supposed to know about the subject matter over some minor detail that didn't fit right in my mind and they swear up and down that its a solid theory, and eventually, on many of the topics it seems that they weren't really right.

I know its not because I'm all knowing, so why is it that this happens so often?

Why do we think that we KNOW how planets form? We've never seen it. We don't even know of someplace that its happening to right now (or at least that we can view right now, light speed/time to earth and all that). I realize we can make observations and some educated guesses ... but they are just guesses in the end, until we actually witness it.

It seems to me that its very bad science to assume, just as an example, that carbon dating is rock solid for any length of time since we started using it. Sure, it probably is, but when you start talking about using it to date something that occurred before the begining of recorded history, we have no idea if some other external event could have happened that screwed up the whole process, and many others that we use to validate carbon dating.

Where is my line of logic wrong? I'm losing faith in science, or rather, scientists. Its turning into a bunch of theories by people who have such tunnel vision that they can not accept that there is a possibility that they don't have a complete picture. Are so many of them really that arrogant, or am I just getting the wrong picture due to bad information as it makes it to me?

I've met a few that seem to share my opinion, but since it seems to be a minority I'm skeptical in my own thoughts.