♦ ficino ♦ Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 For BAA and other astronomers: researchers discover that what had been thought to be two earthlike planets were only effects of magnetic activity on the star under study. But the results help to zero in on evidence for real planets, by clearing away false positives. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/science/earthlike-planets-may-be-merely-an-illusion.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0 Does science try to correct itself or what? Sort of the way Celsus said that early Christians corrected the Bible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted July 9, 2014 Author Share Posted July 9, 2014 I might be wrong about Celsus - it might have been Porphyry. I didn't go look it up. One of the two charged that Christians changed their own scriptures over time. That phenomenon is not the same as scientists' dropping falsified hypotheses, of course! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted July 9, 2014 Share Posted July 9, 2014 Thanks for this F! Back in 1995, when the first exoplanets were being detected, there were only two methods of finding them. Radial velocity, using the Doppler effect. This method is predisposed to detecting massive planets (gas giants) in very tight orbits around their stars. Pulsar Timing, which measures subtle changes in the 'ticking' of pulsars, caused by the gravitational pull of their planets. So neither method could tell us much about rocky, terrestrial exoplanets, similar to the Earth. Nowadays, our arsenal of methods is much wider and more sophisticated. Please check out 'Detection Methods' on this Wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet This new method of weeding out the false positives is the frosting on the cake. Cheers, BAA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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