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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!
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.
Glad this story came up before we launched a probe for a 400,000 year flight. Wow would that have been a letdown.
For that off-topic rant, we are going to send you to that planet. If by chance it's not really there, too bad. Bring a jacket.
Table-ized A.I.
Their planet was cleared to make way for an interstellar highway. They should have visited the local planning office!
Be relentless!
That doesn't really sound like Carl Sagan at all.
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!
Yeah, if Carl Sagan were alive, he'd say
"HELP!!! GET ME OUT OF THIS BOX!!! IT IS SO DARK AND COLD!!!! HELP!!!!"
(stupid lameness filter) Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"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."
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.
So we found this planet by measuring gravitational changes on light. If the planet were in fact cloaked, then wouldn't that be akin to just turning off the gravity for the whole planet? How could they keep everything from floating away? I guess this fancy pants alien technology is just too advanced for me to understand.
"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.
Don't underestimate the possibilities of mythical and theoretical equipment.
Look at Star Trek, since others have used that imaginary universe in this thread already. Cloaking shields to make a ship or planet disappear. Sure, perfectly rational. The ships in the Star Trek universe have gravity plating. If you can create it, you can negate it. Why not? The good old "suspension of disbelief" stands firm. But why stop there. What if the planet (if it was one) were in a trans-dimensional state, where it could be seen but only sometimes has a physical presence.
Or to step into one of my favorite imaginary universes, what if it was an object such as the Tardis. Hell, not only can it show up at any place, at any time in the universe (and sometimes alternate universe), but it can tow objects as large as a planet when needed. And of course, the door isn't a door, it's a transdimensional portal, so you're not stepping inside, you're stepping through. The physical "inside" isn't inside, it's actually somewhere else. Well, unless it's convenient for it to be effected by outside forces and the occupants are thrown around in a Star Trek like drama (Everyone lean left. Everyone lean right. Now fall down.)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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).
I swear it was there a minute ago.
Surely you've noticed this guy before? He's a nametroll of Smidge204.
He's been pretty successful at trolling on /. recently, getting lots of responses despite being both wildly off-topic and making no effort to disguise the trolling. Not posting as AC is apparently enough to get other users to respond to even obvious trolls.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law