Slashdot Mirror
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."
New scientific term
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Glad this story came up before we launched a probe for a 400,000 year flight. Wow would that have been a letdown.
"Attention: Discovery by 5078-G-3-BLUE confirmed. All cloking screens up!"
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
"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.
You assume that what we take as hard rules of physical reality even remotely approximates how the universe actually functions.
If ever there were a reasonable assumption, this is it.