Another case of putting the cart before the horse when it comes to grandiose claims of scientific discovery? According to a social networker at a Torino astrophysics conference, purported Earth-like planet Gliese 581(g) may no longer exist. However, before we consider the possibility that Nero used the Red Matter and imploded the planet a la Vulcan, it is suggested that additional data and some further analysis puts the entire planet’s existence into question.
From Dynamics of Cats (Scienceblogs.com):
IAU 276 The Astrophysics of Planetary Systems: Formation, Structure, and Dynamical Evolution just got underway in Torino, Italy (good week to be in Italy – meeting in Sardinia also, Wish I Was There).Ray Jay reports on social networks:
”We cannot confirm it [Gliese 581g] in our HARPS data” – Francesco Pepe (Geneva team) at IAU 276 in Torino.”
This is interesting, but not totally surprising.
It will be very interesting to see the HARPS paper, and how this shakes out.
Gliese 581g could still be there, it could be in the orbit reported, but this needs some more work.
PS: additional oral reports from the meeting.
HARPS statement is stronger than “we don’t see it” – they find that if they force a solution they get a negative signal appearing, implying the planet is not there, not just that they are not sensitive to it.
50% more data since 2008 published series.
Oh well, this will affect probably zero percent of the Earth’s population, yet the story made a pretty good press release and provided some excitement in preparation for the Torino conference. Even yesterday, DiscoveryNews is considering the possibility of “intelligent life” on this planet…whoa!
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there may be a new kid on the liveable planet block, Gliese 581g. This is the first exoplanet that has the potential to have a solid surface and that is in the habitable zone around its star where liquid water can exist. We all immediately thought, “could there be life?” and one SETI researcher claims to have a possible signal.
Can anyone come up with some parallels to climate science and the urge to run to the press?
I have one, as Carl Wunsch succinctly reacts to a request for a press quote about the new Phil Jones’ climate cooling paper in Nature last month:
“The problem in climate science is that things are hyped, then they’re picked up and exaggerated, sometimes by these crazy bloggers, and you get senators and congressmen talking about it on the floor of the House and Senate.”
“The wider community is trying to make climate science go faster than it can. Science has a natural rhythm, and you can’t make people think faster or more effectively by saying “you’ve got to know the answer by next week.” Things get re-thought, people find bugs in the research. We can hope for breakthroughs, but it will probably take years to realize that they’ve happened. When I get calls from the press, it starts to make me uneasy, since the best they’ll get is a comment from off the top of my head. When I get a request for a comment from a colleague, I take the paper home, skim it, put it aside, read it again, think about it. And even then, sometimes there are papers I didn’t quite appreciate. So these instant off the top of the head reactions don’t do the science any good and don’t do the public any good.”
I wonder who are those “crazy bloggers“?
Why, is it made from Dark Matter.
elmer says:
October 12, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Perfect, when we screw this planet it will only take us 20 years to move to this new planet. Oh yeah first we have to figure out how to travel at THE SPEED OF LIGHT!!!
The Best Way To Travel
(Mike Pinder) Moody Blues
And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel
It’s all a dream
Light passing by on the screen
And there’s you and I on the beam
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel
We ride the waves
Distance is gone, will we find out?
How life bean, will be find out?
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel
And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel
Credit: http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/moodies/mxsearch.htm
the fact that the original research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the NASA Astrobiology Institute should have been a clue!
Revkin had it as the “real deal” and more proof for “global warming”:
1 Oct: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: ‘Real Deal’ Planets, Near and Far
Talk about timing. Months ago, Rory Barnes, an astronomer at the University of Washington with a talent for finding planets, agreed to give a plenary talk at the northwest sectional meeting of the American Physical Society on the subject of “The Hunt for Habitable Exoplanets.”…
…Barnes, in an e-mail exchange last night, said he “had to rush through some quick changes,” adding that “I’m not complaining.”The reason, of course, was the news this week that other planet hunters had identified a planet, Gliese 581g, with attributes suitable for harboring life (as we know it)… I asked Barnes for his impressions of the planet and he said it looks like “the real deal.” Among the critical characteristics, of course, is greenhouse warming (yet another reminder that there really is such a phenomenon)…
He said he’ll send a note describing the buzz about Gliese 581 from the meeting. In the meantime, here’s his detailed reaction to the findings:
“My first impression of this discovery is that it is the real deal. There have been other planets that have flirted with potential habitability, but this one is a very good candidate. I see five issues for habitability: 1) greenhouse warming, 2) composition (water?), 3) internal energy, 4) stellar flaring, and 5) tidal effects. None of these appear to be obvious impediments to habitability.”
1) Although it receives slightly less radiation from its host star than the Earth, that is not really an issue. The Earth needs about 20 degrees of greenhouse warming to reach the freezing point of water, whereas this planet requires about 50. A little more water, CO2 or methane than in the Earth’s atmosphere would take care of that, and that is entirely plausible…
COMMENT BY MARKB: If Dot Earth reported a Kitten Up A Tree story, global warming would somehow be shoe-horned in. Such is the mind-set.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/real-deal-planets-near-and-far/
anyone attend the APS meeting who could give us a briefing on what went down?
there were about 1,500 MSM reports on this non-existent planet and only one (UK Express) MSM print or broadcast report (blogs don’t count) on Hal Lewis’s resignation from the APS.
could all those MSM reports in Sept re UFOs – Aliens Are Monitoring Our Nukes, Worry Ex-Air Force Officers, Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman to be appointed UN Alien Ambassador, UFO over Inner Mongolia airport have been planted to prepare for the gliese 581g announcement?
LOL.
The ultimate result of a runaway greenhouse effect. They will be missed.
@ur momisuglyPG Sharrow:
“To that end, I have been working on such a device, off and on, for the last 20 years. If ” they” can do it I can. Roman candle rocket science is a waste of time and money and is too dangerous.”
Be very, very careful as all such work by government entities would be deeply classified and if they discovered that you were actually successful…. well you should remember K. Silkwood. The safest route would be immediately send out your discoveries to as many people as possible on the internet, so let us know.
@ur momisugly Gary Hladik :
“I think we should find intelligent life on earth before speculating about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.”
There is an observation that an intense extraterrestrial interest developed in Earth about the time of all those multiple nuclear pop-offs and the theory goes that upon actually observing our historical humanistic tendency to warfare and imperialistic servitude, we have been warned that any attempts at proceeding beyond or own solar system would inevitably result in rather dire consequences.
“John Endicott says:
October 12, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Perhaps Marvin the Maritian used his Explosive Space Modulator on it because it was obstructing his view of Venus.
”
Or maybe..
Perhaps Marvin the Maritian used his Explosive Space Modulator on it because it was obstructing his view of Uranus.
My sense of humor is warped and ugly, I appologize somewhat. I still do not understand why there is not more work going into Alpha Centauri, I understand that its a Southern Hemisphere star, but I would think you would look close to home for habitable planets first, and then move out.
I guess I realize there is a race to uncover easy to find planets, but to me it just seems silly that they spend so much time on a star 20 light years away when hello, there is a binary (trinary) star system five times closer that could actually have an effect on humanity on the future if a (habitable) planet is discovered there.
It gets even better, someone has detected a signal from the same possible non-existent planet. Just like the mid-tropospheric signature for CO2 that isn’t there they have found a signal from a planet that isn’t there as well. Boy, you can’t make this stuff up.
Schrödinger’s planet?
Too bad ….2o years? I’m old / matured women on that time ………….
Is undiscovering a planet like uninviting a guest or speaker. If you don’t like what it looks like or where it is?
Wow, from “Earth-like planet with water in the Goldilocks zone with 100% chance of life” to “alien signals” to “the planet may not exist at all” in the course of just a week or two. I’d say someone is pumping for funds. Rule number one: always hype something with a long time line so that funding will not run out until well after it no longer matters to you. Twenty lightyears is comfortably far enough away.
Unless we can, somehow, invent faster than light travel, we’re stuck on Earth, until our Sun consumes it. (And a quote, maybe not accurate, from a good (IMO) film “Earth? That dump!”).
This reminds me of a old article with some handy tips (but not guarantees):
“What Journalists Want: Nine Things for Scientists to Think about Before Talking to Reporters”
http://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20040621/science.html
Probably the best thing is for scientists to not talk to reporters. 😉
From Science News
Existence of habitable exoplanet questioned: Swiss team fails to confirm recent discovery of an extrasolar planet that might have right conditions for life
“Other astronomers say that only time, and more studies, will tell if the first exoplanet in the habitable zone has truly been found or not. ‘I don’t know if we should be in such a hurry to say one way or the other,’ says MIT astronomer Sara Seager. ‘We will have consensus at some point; I don’t think we need to vote right now.’ ”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64308/title/Existence_of_habitable_exoplanet_questioned
Science by consensus? How about that!
Gliese has become the new Thule, sighted once, but never to be found again…
I note only that there was a certain exoteric pressure in the mass media at the same time, without specifically mentioning UFOs, UN envoys and the Vatican position on baptising non-carbon-based life forms with the universal solvent in order to “save” them. Silly media.
Back in the early-90s when exoplanets were not yet discovered (and the term “exoplanet” not yet coined) the first announced discovery had to be retracted when it turned out that the 182-day period of the orbit was just a measurement error due to the Earth’s own orbit around the sun. Very soon after that, however, solid evidence of exoplanets were discovered, and now we have a whole new field of astronomy.
Simlarly, just because one group rushed to publish on Gliese 581(g) and another group has been unable to confirm it, that does not mean that science is all corrupt or that evidence for solid exoplanets will never be discovered. Science has many false starts when you start looking around in the weeds. If Gliese 581(g) is found to not exist, some other solid exoplanet will be found, and this is just science self correcting.
Of course, similarly, that means that one scientist emotionally venting in an e-mail doesn’t destroy an entire branch of science, but that may be getting too far ahead for you all….