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posted by FatPhil on Monday December 12 2016, @03:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the orbital-mockanics dept.

Bad Astronomy has an article about an astronomer who had observational data to suggest he had discovered a planet around another star and published his findings in a peer-reviewed journal. In 1855.

We now know, with further, more accurate observations, that no such planet exists there, and the offsets are the product of uncertainty in the telescopic observations that were, to be fair, done by eye.

But still, despite that, I must tip my hat to Jacob. He did his homework, made the best observations and calculations he could, expressed skepticism in his writing, and came up with what he thought was the best explanation. Mind you, again to be fair, this took a great deal of cleverness to dream up. Perhaps he had been influenced by the recent discovery of Neptune.

If anything, he was guilty of overconfidence in his own measurements. Still, technology eventually caught up with his imagination and we did start to find alien worlds. The field of exoplanet research is now a thriving one, which has moved beyond the simple discovery stage to one where we are beginning to physically categorize and model them.

Not so incidentally, we have since found planets orbiting other stars using the method Jacob pioneered in 1855. He may have been the first person ever to publish this idea, and for that he deserves acknowledgment.

This short video gives some more information and context of the man and his (unfortunately erroneous) discovery. The original paper is also freely available.


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 12 2016, @08:18PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday December 12 2016, @08:18PM (#440533) Journal

    There's a philosophical discussion: how can you know what you don't know?

    To quote Donald Rumsfeld [wikipedia.org]:

    Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

    The quantification of scientific error is about the process of trying to put boundaries on the "known unknowns." There is of course always the possibility of "unknown unknowns" though, which can obviously lead people astray in science. But just because one doesn't know something for certain, it doesn't follow that you can't know anything about the parameters of that unknown or that one can't quantify it somewhat based on statistical features of the data.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 12 2016, @08:39PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday December 12 2016, @08:39PM (#440540)

    Last time I heard the "unknown unknowns" bit, it was being applied to early space travel. Known unknowns, like the maximum intensity of solar flares, can at least be characterized and predicted with some level of certainty. Unknown unknowns, like - well - anything you say will sound absurd until it actually happens, those are the most dangerous aspect of true exploration.

    True scientific exploration is a journey into the realm of unknown unknowns. "Science" that stays in a comfortable place where most or all of the unknowns are actually known and partly characterized, that's bordering on engineering. Both are well worth pursuing.

    All people, scientists and consumers of scientific output, need to keep in mind that results from true scientific exploration can be reversed just as easily as dogmatic opinion. The comfortable engineering-like science is building up stronger foundations of experience based knowledge, when it's not being overly biased by outside influences.

    Just calling something "Science" doesn't make it a better foundation for decision making, you also need to know what kind of science you are dealing with - and that's not always an easy thing to determine.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]