Way back in 2010, Gliese 581g made waves as "the Goldilocks planet". It was the first planet scientists found within the habitable zone - the region around a star where it's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to endure on a planet's surface. But after the initial excitement about finding a planet that could potentially support life, some scientists started to seriously doubt whether Gliese 581g was really there, because the signal was weak. Despite all the debate, lots of astronomers listed Gliese 581g as the top spot to look for alien life. Now, new research says that Gliese 581g doesn't actually exist.
Astronomers can't actually see the planets in the Gliese 581 star system. Instead, they detected the planetary candidates by monitoring the star's light. As a planet orbits, its gravity tugs on the star and distorts the light coming off it, changing the wavelengths and thus the color of light that reaches telescopes here on Earth. (Here's a longer explanation of the radial velocity technique, if you're interested.) The problem is that the star also moves, and as it rotates its sunspots and other solar activity also distort the light coming off of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 05 2014, @01:30AM
See, here's the problem with Earthbound observation: everything is too far away! Launch some probes in the direction of Gliese 581 and just maybe they might provide more reliable information, eh?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ryuugami on Saturday July 05 2014, @01:41AM
Certainly. There's nothing wrong with waiting a few thousand years to confirm or deny if the information is accurate before publishing, eh?
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 05 2014, @03:14AM
Someone invent FTL probes so these scientists can stop embarrassing themselves by publishing inaccurate findings. I would do it but I learned all my physics knowledge from Morgan Freeman.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday July 05 2014, @03:25AM
Saying that a scientist embarrassed themselves by publishing a theory and having it disproven in favor of a better one is like saying a programmer is embarrassed because someone sent a patch in that improves their code.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 05 2014, @03:30AM
Thank you for explaining why all software is low quality garbage: programmers have no shame.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lagg on Saturday July 05 2014, @03:39AM
That's another parallel actually. Much like scientists the programmers that have no shame are the ones that think their stuff is superior by default and approachable by no one. Note how the "scientists" such as those defending religion or things like homeopathy are usually the ones that ignore criticism and reject all alternative approaches. Thus becoming known as hacks. The low quality software you speak of is usually maintained by such types. If theories and software aren't improved they'll always be bad. So even if we did have FTL probes (not actually eliminating that 1000 year problem, FTL doesn't mean universally instant) the problem of inaccurate observations that need to be disproven will always be there. Even ones like this, it isn't like we haven't misidentified bodies even in our own system like pluto.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Saturday July 05 2014, @06:55AM
Either there was some old misidentification that I forgot about and am to lazy to check, or you're talking about the Pluto-aint-a-planet thing a few years back. If you are talking about that, that was just a change in nomenclature. It's not like we found out Pluto was smaller than we thought it was. We just decided that we won't call it a planet any more.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber