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Earth's 'Bigger, Older Cousin' Maybe Doesn't Even Exist (npr.org)
Ever since astronomers started to detect planets beyond our solar system, they've been trying to find another world just like Earth. And few years ago, they announced that they'd found a planet that was the closest match yet -- Kepler-452b. Trouble is, some astronomers now say it's not possible to know for sure that this planet actually exists. From a report: "There's new information that we can now quantify which tells us something that we didn't know before," says Fergal Mullally, who used to be an astronomer on the science team for NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. In 2015, NASA declared that Kepler-452b was the first near-Earth-sized planet orbiting in the "habitable" zone around a star very similar to our sun. The space agency called it Earth's "bigger, older cousin," and scientists were so enthusiastic that one began quoting poetry at a news conference. The original science wasn't shoddy, Mullally says. It's just that, since then, researchers have learned more about the telescope's imperfections.
I too would wanna disappear if I found out the Earth is my cousin.
I Fergaled your mom once. It was a gawdawful mess. Never again.
dad?
The inhabitants of Kepler-452a all turn their washing machines on at the same time and thus the lights dimmed. This is the dangers of solar power that nobody warns you about! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
All this excitement, I know what you're thinking, and you apes need to start taking better care of what is likely the only planet in the entire universe capable of supporting life.
Ref; Fermi's Paradox.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Maybe you missed the "In 2015, ..." part. Obama was our ruler then.
Que the Trumpers exclaiming "See science isn't fact (global warming isn't real, the earth is flat, Hillary's email, BENGAZZII!!, etc...)."
The fundamental thing that everyone should understand about science -- and most people don't -- is that science is nothing more and nothing less than an error correction process.
Everything we know is wrong, at least in some way and in some degree. Science is the process by which we identify errors and fix them, but science is itself an error-prone process and all scientific results are erroneous, at least in some way and in some degree. The fact that errors are discovered is not evidence that science doesn't work, it's evidence that science does work, that it identifies and corrects humanity's errors -- including those generated by previous science.
What makes science works is that although we always introduce new errors in our understanding when we correct old errors in our understanding, the new errors are nearly always smaller. We approach the truth iteratively and asymptotically, getting ever closer but never arriving.
And if anyone ever tells you that science is pointless because scientists "keep changing their minds", you need only point at the wealth, comfort and plenty in which we live, as compared to the poverty, hardship and scarcity in which our ancestors lived, just a few generations ago. The fact that science has not yet achieved perfection doesn't mean it doesn't work, it just means it's not yet done (and it will *never* be done; there will always be more errors to correct).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I've long contemplated that we are just speculating from electromagnetic radiation that falls on us. What we confidently think we know about what's beyond our neighborhood, we do not really know.
The science is se
The original science wasn't shoddy, Mullally says. It's just that, since then, researchers have learned more about the telescope's imperfections
What was that about carpenters and their tools?
Anonymous Coward... I am your father.
Evolution is a fact. You have some evidence to the contrary that is not easily disproven?
Found another Russian spammer.
What - you've been able to replicate evolution in a controlled environment?
Same scientists who tell us global warming and evolution are "facts".
Only those scientists that are hyper-partisan, rent seekers, do-as-I-say, or overly emotional types tend to do that.
Have you been to a museum? Have you even gotten a decent grade 5 education? I think the answer to both questions is no.