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Alpha Centauri Turns Out Not To Have a Planet After All. At Least, Not Yet (forbes.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the either-that-or-The-First-Order-has-some-explaining-to-do dept.

StartsWithABang writes: In 2012, astronomers announced that the nearest star system to us, the Alpha Centauri system, possessed at least one exoplanet around it. A periodic signal that recurred just every 3.24 days was consistent with an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting and gravitationally tugging on the second largest member of the star system: Alpha Centauri B. That planet, named Alpha Centauri Bb, turns out not to actually be there. A reanalysis of the data shows that a combination of stellar properties and the times at which the observations were made conspired to produce this spurious signal: a signal that goes away if the data is handled correctly. Accounting for everything correctly reveals something else of interest, a periodic 20-day signal, which may turn out — with better observations — to be Alpha Centauri's first exoplanet after all.

3 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Known unknowns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    handling data correctly got rid of the 3 day signal, but another 20 day signal showed up. So they measured it wrong? Or did they measure it wrong the second time?

    1. Re:Known unknowns by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Since 2012, we have much greater experience with exoplanets, more data, and better algorithms. So a mistake today is less likely than a mistake 4 years ago.

  2. Not yet??? by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow, I think that may be one of the worst headlines I've seen on Slashdot, and that's saying something. "Not yet" does not mean "we're not sure yet." And "turns out not to have a planet" does not mean "we don't know if it does, but our earlier assumption turns out to be wrong."

    From the headline, I assumed that they'd managed to establish that Alpha C. actually did not have a planet, but did have coalescing clouds that would soon (in astronomical terms) become one. That would be an extremely cool discovery! Unfortunately, neither of those things appears to be true (or if it is, we haven't established it).

    How about "Reports of Alpha Centauri's Planet Proven to be Premature"? It's even got some nice alliterism to it. And, possibly more importantly, it's got some relationship to the facts (at least as presented in TFS).