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Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist
sciencehabit better let Greg Dean know that "Two weeks ago, U.S.-based astronomers announced the discovery of the first Goldilocks planet circling another star: just the right size and just the right temperature to harbor alien life. But yesterday at an exoplanet meeting in Turin, Italy, Switzerland-based astronomers announced that they could find no trace of the prized planet in their observations of the same planetary system."
Neither did Goldilocks, the kid.
Table-ized A.I.
Aliens stole the planet because they noticed us eyeing it and that we're already wrecking the one we have...
New scientific term
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
quantum planet?
and cloaked the planet!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Uhh ohh, I think the earthlings are looking our way, quick hide!!
Crap they saw us. Keep hiding maybe they'll go away.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Heres the thing, I am NOT gay. Im STRAIGHT but you dont see me going around advertising it. You dont see me celebrating STRAIGHT pride. And gloryholes are out of the question because theres a chance it might be a guy on the other hand thats how straight I am. I cant help but feel this is the worst court decision in American History. Exactly what is accomplished by gay guys telling us there gay? The illusion is that this is the greatest step for equal rights since we freed all the slaves, when really all it does is give gays the go ahead to tell me how much they admire my incredible hulking body. It will lead to a world where everyone says I love your hot manly body and we should get gay. I do NOT want some guy trying to score with me in a foxhole which for straight men is are most primal fear. These guys cant even go 24 hours without sex and on the 25th hour they may make a move. Bottom line Im tired of activist judges making decisions like in this case, or in the People vs Larry Flynt, or in any case where the outcome goes against my religious beleifs. Its hard to teach my daughter the value of keeping the faith when you have the courts telling perverts they are allowed to do as they please. Just remember that the Bible says and I quote "Thou shalt NOT be gay" so you might be allowed in the military but you will NOT be allowed into the kingdom of heaven. And for the record I am NOT homophobic I wont fight clubs being built in gay districts or wherever will keep them away from around are schools and churches, but as far as the idea of gays in the military lets keep it alien. Jobs where you get shot at every day are tough enough without the chance of getting shot in the face with ejaculate.
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Glad this story came up before we launched a probe for a 400,000 year flight. Wow would that have been a letdown.
I sense a great disturbance in the force...
They were just using the star as a place to build it.
now that they are done, they are going to move it to a new location.
call it a mobile home.
Their planet was cleared to make way for an interstellar highway. They should have visited the local planning office!
Be relentless!
It was blocking my view of Venus-47, so I removed it. -Marvin
Table-ized A.I.
Sounds like a clever ruse to hoard Unobtainium if I've ever heard one.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
This is the third time a "habitable" planet was discovered in the Gliese system that turned out to be not so habitable, if it exists at all.
Great going.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Well it looks like the U.S. astronomers used two sets of data gathered from different time periods for their analysis. Meanwhile, the Swiss astronomers used a third set of data gathered over a different time period for their analysis. I would think the first thing that should be done would be to swap data sets. Have the U.S. astronomers run their analysis on the Swiss data set with their tools, and have the Swiss astronomers run their analysis on the U.S. data sets with their tools. After all is said and done, compare the results yielded by each data set. If only the U.S. astronomers are finding the gravitational wiggles, then it means that either their tools are inducing some kind of experimental error, or the Swiss tools are missing some critical component. At which point the tools and methods between the two groups should be compared and contrasted to observe differences.
If, however, U.S. analysis of the Swiss data sets similarly yields a no planet result, and Swiss analysis of U.S. data sets yields a planet exists result, then you can conclude that the problem is in the data, and not the analysis being done. So, the moral of the story to both teams is to send their data to each other. For bonus points, both parties can publish all of their data so that a few third parties can conduct their own analysis. This is what science is all about after all folks!
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Clearly the Romulans have vastly improved their cloaking technology, and do not appreciate our feeble attempts at espionage.
Mork's planet! If anyone remembers the 70s sitcom Mork & Mindy. Orkians were such big chickens they sometimes had to hide their entire planet.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It's obviously a quantum planet!
... you've got some 'splainin' to do.
Give me a break. They found out we spotted their planet so they decided to cloak it. Cloaked planets are a common thing, ask any starship captain.
I think they can be justifiably proud of this technological terror they've constructed.
Really, Obi-Wan? You lost another one?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
using only there own unpublished data set can't fin'd the planet.
OK. Nothing really changed here. They needed to do more research to confirm the data. They still need t do that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe it moved. Did they try looking outside the Goldilocks zone, where Gliese 581h used to be?
You're looking in the wrong century! Y'know, light-speed travel, space-time relativity, and all that. Try turning your observatory telescopes a fraction of a degree...thattaway. There. That's where the light appears to be coming from now.
"It's not on the charts... what's going on?"
"Our position is correct, except... no Goldilocks..."
"What do you mean? Where is it?"
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid. It ain't there."
Saw this coming! It's amazing how they can assume the temperature and composition of something, how it spins, what its orbit is like just like we were there. By the way, barely know all that about our own planets in the solar system. Then suddenly oops, it's not even there and oh by the way, we don't have a way to really even detect planets for sure. Just like when they said, "hmmm, we made a measurement of all the mass in the universe, and by measurement we mean complete guess. It doesn't match up with what we can see, as we have counted and seen every object in the entire universe and also know its density. The remaining matter must be some sort of unknown, unexplainable material that breaks every law of physics called dark matter and certainly not merely a miscalculation or matter that literally has no radiation emitted from it or bouncing off ot and dark energy is clearly made of leprochaun magic."
For more classic space blunders, look up...ANYTHING related to space!
The obvious explanation is that they can look at the sky with limited tools and when they get done doing all they can possibly do, they're bored so they start making crap up and convincing people it's real to get more grants.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
It's a space station.
That's a Battle Station!
That's no planet, it's a space station!
Thats what I'm trying to tell you, kid. It ain't there. It's been totally blown away.
I don't want to look on this as the moment where those damn neutrals won the new space race.
Discovering new habitable planets while seemingly not researching ways to get us there is kind of like going to a whorehouse with no money. You usually end up very pissed off that all you could do is look.
Prioritization usually has value. This would be no exception.
Sounds like the plot of Peter F. Hamilton's novel Pandora's Star. Basically a Star being observed by an astronomer goes goes out suddenly, it turns out it was enveloped in a solar-system sized impenetrable black barrier. Some alien entity did so to wall-in a potentially dangerous civilization intent on expanding to other systems. In this case the planet may have been sealed off.
Now given this star system is 20 light years aware they must not have liked something they saw in our leaked radio or TV from 1980, been deeply offended and immediately dispatched their interstellar battle fleet. Cue dyson barrier locking them down.
It may have been the original Battlestar Galactica, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080221/
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
It could be this.
If your data set resolves down to 1x10E-16 and their data set resolves down to 1x10E-12, the 1x10E-12 data is obviously not going to yield the same findings. It's going to miss a lot of detail, and perhaps be useless when run through your analysis process. Such a thing could be an issue with the scales involved, but whether or not that's the case - who knows?
"Sir, about that planet, we've detected a flash of light."
"Captain, are you telling me they're testing nucular bombs?"
"No sir, just a flash of l--"
"Do you have any idea what the public will do when they discover the aliens are testing WMDs and we have no plan for dealing with them?"
"Sir, I was mistaken. There was no flash of light."
"Not good enough, captain."
"Sir, I was mistaken. There was no planet."
"That's more like it."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
from Global Warming scientists and fabricated data to suit their pre-formed conclusions.
We finally found the planet of precise timekeeping, highly secure banking, immaculate knives and good-ass chocolate and they put out a report denying its existence. Touche, aliens.
Even if it does exist, who would want to go there after reading this:
average temperature between minus 24 and minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 to minus 12 degrees Celsius). Gliese 581g completes an orbit every 37 days or so.
frozen plus vertigo? no thanks.
That's no moon.
That's Uranus!
The American team used a combined set of observations: One 11-year-long set consisted of 122 measurements made by the team, while the other set was 4.3 years long and consisted of 119 measurements published by the consortium.
[The Swiss group] used only their own observations, but they expanded their published data set from what the U.S. group included in its analysis to a length of 6.5 years and 180 measurements.
So, the American study had 241 observations over at least 11 years and the data is peer reviewed and published. The Swiss apparently are refuting that by ignoring half the data and adding 61 data points from 2.2 years that haven't been peer reviewed. Obviously they're a reputable group, but I'll wait for them to look at *all* of the data available to them, preferably published data, before just taking them at their word. Doubly so for a negative finding since alpha (chance of a false positive) tends to be a lot smaller than beta (chance of a false negative).
It's a faaaaake! :0)
actually not :-B
Of course there was no planet there! The first set of astronomers changed the outcome by observing it!
#DeleteChrome
I expected as much from slime but it really doesn't make a difference to me whether they stick with their story or recant. My post yesterday remains as valid now as when I wrote it => http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1816924&cid=33870572
I'm accustomed to being baited but the fact of the matter is they made the call so the call is a matter of world public record. It isn't a point of whether they're Right or Wrong. It's the announcement of it that shows intent. They showed their heart and the world erupted in celebration. Done deal folks, signed, sealed, and delivered, planet real or not real, their celebrating was real. The launch of the woman scientist for Gliese 581 is also still on.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
Shame too, because I was hoping to go on vacation there.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
I swear it was there a minute ago.
In other news, nothing really happened today here on earth either.
so much for 100% chance of it having life
If we did discover a habitable planet mere 20 light years away, I bet that it would be easier to gather funding for research on getting there.
Brought a tear to me eye, there.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Couple of decades down the road, and Lucas (or his clone) will make an "updated and upgraded" version.
With more aliens saying things like "Whatda..." while driving.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Unfortunately the planet got slashdotted and if you look its way an error pops up:
404 Error: Planet Not Found.
The planet you requested was not found.
Did you mean to look at LB4-26? You will be redirected there in five seconds.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
for us to destroy that planet, too.
Better start watching for guys with shiny flying surfboards.
That's a Space Station!
Greetings Earthlings,
We are the Transcendors. We assume our ambassador Stanley Fulham has prepared you for our arrival.
Obviously we have a PLANET THIEF in gliese 581...
.. just an example of the /. effect on a planet
This aspect of science is not taught enough. Science is only a model, but it is a fantastic and useful model and is constantly being made better. It seems to me that some people feel that using the word model to describe science is some sort of pejorative like the way the uneducated use the word "theory".
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
as all the "psychics" who "remote viewed" this new Earth-like planet, and regaled their little corners of the internet with tales of really tall humanoid shaped tree dwellers (yeah, go figure) will now have to back-pedal like mad.
And still, their fans will continue to believe this nonsense.
(/rant)
Planet Jackers hauled it off. It had lots of critters on it. Critters burn good.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You mean they should look at the combined data?
Seeds, Micheal. "Foundations of Astronomy". 4th ed. Page 15:
A scientific model is a mental conception of how something works. We all use models. For example, we might have a model in our minds of how a car works and use this model to make practical decisions about how to start the car on a cold morning. Our model doesn't have to be right to be useful. We may be totally wrong about how the engine works, but our model will probably be useful as long as we don't extend it too far. Of course, if we decide to rebuild our own carburetor, we might discover that our model is no longer adequate for our needs.
A scientific model need not be right, but it must be useful. That is, it must allow us to make useful predictions about how nature works. Scientists use models as mental crutches to help them think about nature. A chemist, for example, thinks of a molecule as little balls linked together with rods. Real molecules are much more complex than this model, but it is almost impossible to think about chemistry without using such a model to visualize molecular structure.
The astronomer's model of the celestial sphere is very helpful, and we can use it to think about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. We can imagine the way the stars move across the sky, and we can predict the motion of the sky as a whole. Of course, the model is wrong, but as a mental aid to visualizing the motions in the sky, it is very useful within its limitations.
Some scientific models can be systems of mathematical equations expressed in computer programs that mimic the behavior of complex processes-an exploding star, for example. Our imaginations are not capable of numerical precision; such models act as mathematical crutches to help us "imagine" complicated processes with numerical precision.
Scientific models can range from general aids to visualization to mathematical equations that mimic the behaviors of complex systems. In every case, the model helps us think about nature. It doesn't have to be true, but as long as we don't press a model beyond its limitations, it can be tremendously useful. In a sense, scientists are not so much searching for ultimate truths as they are trying to build better and better models of how nature works.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
In a shocking media release from his Mom's basement some other scientist has used this data as proof that the DeathStar does indeed exist and that the Empire is all too real.
That's no moon!
Actually, that was the Skylark of Valeron....
mark
The Swiss found no planet, just an asteroid field and... a small moon.
When we discover a planet due to wobble, can we tell the difference between the mass of the planet, the mass of the planet plus satellites, or the mass of the satellites? Do moons of a planet (even if they're as big as Titan) make much of a difference in the mass of the planet? With a gas giant orbiting in the sweet spot, wouldn't each satellite be another chance for the conditions to be right for life?
No! Alderaan is peaceful! We have no weapons, you can't possibly...
You can only find it when you are not attempting to look for it.
Oh, we found a planet...
Sorry, you didnt...