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Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

18 points by The_Igor 16y ago

devmonk 16y ago
Shhh! Nasa was all excited.
Towle_ 16y ago
© 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved. Quick! Somebody, anybody: who owns the AAAS? Is it the Rockefellers? The Rothschilds? They're keeping ALL the habitable planets to themselves, I tell you.
mcantor 16y ago
This is basically irrelevant to the linked post, but I have to ask: Was I the only one who felt crushed, betrayed and crestfallen upon making the terrible realization that space doesn't actually look like all of the awesome "photos" floating around? Like the Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula). Sure, that's technically what it "looks like," but the colors are all determined by the artistic license of whoever processed the X-ray information and composite photographs of light in the nonvisible spectrum. Drat. :-(
- sigstoat 16y ago
  Folks should keep this in mind when they get agitated about the possibility of NASA getting rid of Hubble. Basically all of your pretty space pictures are false color, so it doesn't matter which space telescope produces them.
  - windsurfer 16y ago
    How are the hubble's images any more "false color" than my digital SLR?
    - gaius 16y ago
      Because when you assign a visible colour to a particular invisible wavelength, you can choose whatever colour you like. If you went there and looked with the naked eye, you'd see just black.
      - mcantor 16y ago
        Exactly. Since when is space less awesome than we think it is?
      - InclinedPlane 16y ago
        You wouldn't just see black, you'd see a different set of colors, generally more muted than the false-color pictures from telescopes.
    - sigstoat 16y ago
      i don't think there is a single instrument on Hubble which is confined to the human visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, or any subset thereof. and i'd be amazed if duplicating the color response curves of the human eye was a design consideration. unlike your DSLR (unless you popped the IR filter off of it).
- gojomo 16y ago
  Just pretend your own eyes were more highly evolved, such that the spectacular synthetic colors of these photos are just a pale imitation of what your super-eyes could discern. After all, our eyes' visible range is merely what's proven useful for our native habitat.
  - mcantor 16y ago
    That's a good point. Maybe in another million years or so, my descendants will be space-faring badasses who have evolved hydrogen-sulphur-oxygen-vision because you don't want to run into a nascent galaxy while you're making an interstellar Taco Bell run at faster than the speed of light, and they will see space the way it looks in the Hubble photos, like God intended. That makes me feel a little better.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  The "pillars of creation" image does not contain x-ray data, I believe you misread something out of that wiki article in believing so. The particular image is not true color, but it's also not just a photoshop job, it represents a very real view of the Eagle nebula, just not one your human eyes could see. For an actual true color (for humans) image of the Eagle nebula, try this: http://eaglenebula.net/astronomy/astrophotos/The_Eagle_Nebula/Eagle_Nebula_In_True_Color-full.jpg http://eaglenebula.net/astronomy/astrophotos/The_Eagle_Nebul...
NHQ 16y ago
Maybe it shifted behind the star when they looked...?
- danparsonson 16y ago
  Since they're inferring the (non-)existence of the planet by observing the motion of the star... that wouldn't matter.
code_duck 16y ago
Well, that's confusing. The comments on that site are even more confusing.
robryan 16y ago
The dangers of coming out with these findings before they have been properly verified. With the size of the deviations in star velocity they are trying to detect right on the edge of our current capability.
rflrob 16y ago
Well darn. I looked at the data they'd published saying they'd found the planet, and while it seemed tenuous to me, I should've gone on record somewhere saying so. On the other hand, I'm not a planetary astronomer, so my I'm not really qualified to tell what is strong data or not, so I just trusted the reviewers.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
The title is a bit overdramatic given the actual situation. One team detected has produced evidence of a particular planet, another team has attempted to corroborate that evidence and could not, though their instruments are not sensitive enough to rule out said planet. And thus we await more data. This is a tempest in a teapot.

18 points by The_Igor 16y ago

Shhh! Nasa was all excited.

© 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved. Quick! Somebody, anybody: who owns the AAAS? Is it the Rockefellers? The Rothschilds? They're keeping ALL the habitable planets to themselves, I tell you.

mcantor 16y ago

This is basically irrelevant to the linked post, but I have to ask: Was I the only one who felt crushed, betrayed and crestfallen upon making the terrible realization that space doesn't actually look like all of the awesome "photos" floating around? Like the Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula). Sure, that's technically what it "looks like," but the colors are all determined by the artistic license of whoever processed the X-ray information and composite photographs of light in the nonvisible spectrum. Drat. :-(

sigstoat 16y ago
Folks should keep this in mind when they get agitated about the possibility of NASA getting rid of Hubble. Basically all of your pretty space pictures are false color, so it doesn't matter which space telescope produces them.
- windsurfer 16y ago
  How are the hubble's images any more "false color" than my digital SLR?
  - gaius 16y ago
    Because when you assign a visible colour to a particular invisible wavelength, you can choose whatever colour you like. If you went there and looked with the naked eye, you'd see just black.
    - mcantor 16y ago
      Exactly. Since when is space less awesome than we think it is?
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      You wouldn't just see black, you'd see a different set of colors, generally more muted than the false-color pictures from telescopes.
  - sigstoat 16y ago
    i don't think there is a single instrument on Hubble which is confined to the human visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, or any subset thereof. and i'd be amazed if duplicating the color response curves of the human eye was a design consideration. unlike your DSLR (unless you popped the IR filter off of it).
gojomo 16y ago
Just pretend your own eyes were more highly evolved, such that the spectacular synthetic colors of these photos are just a pale imitation of what your super-eyes could discern. After all, our eyes' visible range is merely what's proven useful for our native habitat.
- mcantor 16y ago
  That's a good point. Maybe in another million years or so, my descendants will be space-faring badasses who have evolved hydrogen-sulphur-oxygen-vision because you don't want to run into a nascent galaxy while you're making an interstellar Taco Bell run at faster than the speed of light, and they will see space the way it looks in the Hubble photos, like God intended. That makes me feel a little better.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
The "pillars of creation" image does not contain x-ray data, I believe you misread something out of that wiki article in believing so. The particular image is not true color, but it's also not just a photoshop job, it represents a very real view of the Eagle nebula, just not one your human eyes could see. For an actual true color (for humans) image of the Eagle nebula, try this: http://eaglenebula.net/astronomy/astrophotos/The_Eagle_Nebula/Eagle_Nebula_In_True_Color-full.jpg http://eaglenebula.net/astronomy/astrophotos/The_Eagle_Nebul...

NHQ 16y ago

Maybe it shifted behind the star when they looked...?

danparsonson 16y ago
Since they're inferring the (non-)existence of the planet by observing the motion of the star... that wouldn't matter.

code_duck 16y ago

Well, that's confusing. The comments on that site are even more confusing.

robryan 16y ago

The dangers of coming out with these findings before they have been properly verified. With the size of the deviations in star velocity they are trying to detect right on the edge of our current capability.

rflrob 16y ago

Well darn. I looked at the data they'd published saying they'd found the planet, and while it seemed tenuous to me, I should've gone on record somewhere saying so. On the other hand, I'm not a planetary astronomer, so my I'm not really qualified to tell what is strong data or not, so I just trusted the reviewers.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

The title is a bit overdramatic given the actual situation. One team detected has produced evidence of a particular planet, another team has attempted to corroborate that evidence and could not, though their instruments are not sensitive enough to rule out said planet. And thus we await more data. This is a tempest in a teapot.