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'Most Earth-Like' Exoplanet Gets Major Demotion
audiovideodisco writes "Last month, the team behind NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planetary candidate ever spotted: KOI 326.01, an approximately Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. There was much excitement; one astrophysicist even calculated the value of the new planet as exactly $223,099.93. But when an innocent fact-checker's question sent one of the researchers back to look at some figures, she noticed that the star's brightness was listed incorrectly in a reference catalog, throwing the planet's properties into doubt. After jiggering the calculations, the Kepler team now says that KOI 326.01 is neither Earth-sized nor in the habitable zone, and may actually be orbiting a different star. The Kepler researcher says, 'We're seeing the scientific method playing out in real time.' While this news is a bit of a downer, Kepler is just getting going, and it's expected to find many, many more Earth-like planets."
Sounds more like an epic success for science to me.
The catalog was wrong, it's not a calculation it's just having the wrong data. Of course a quick look at the picture would have shown the error, but who looks at anything but the table of numbers?
Just... No. What you are describing is nothing related to science.
What you are talking about may apply to science journalism. That is basically what happens when a liberal arts major gets told that he drew the short straw and has to write a science article instead of sympathizing with starving Rawandan kids or discussing the latest celebrity gossip.
"The chances for life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, a UC professor of astronomy and astrophysics says. "I have almost no doubt about it."
I and every other research scientist I know (a lot of them) all just shook our heads when we heard that quote.
That'd be...
CNN
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/30/100-percent-chance-for-life-on-newly-found-planet/
Space.com
http://www.space.com/9225-odds-life-newfound-earth-size-planet-100-percent-astronomer.html ,and a host of others. This was in mainstream press. Not tabloids.
There are a few scientists around who occasionally say idiotic things. Unfortunately, sometimes they do it in front of reporters. This would be one of those times.