A planetary rant

[guppiecat]

If you have a headline of "Planet Detected at Solar System's Edge", would it not make sense to actually have a planet detected?

If you have a photo, wouldn't it make sense for it to be of the actual planet, instead of an artist's conception?

If it's an artist's conception, wouldn't it make sense to say that it's not a photo instead of showing a 'photo' and stating "So-called 'Planet X' is shown. The planet -- half the size of Earth -- is believed to be in the outer reaches of the solar system."

Simply put, they did not detect a planet, they made an hypothesis and ran a simulation. The simulation suggests that there is a planet with an "oblong elliptical solar orbit and circle the sun every thousand years" with a radius of "15 to 26 billion kilometers". That is a far cry from 'detecting a planet' and even farther from having a bloody 'photo'.

The travesty of reporting can be found here.

I expected better of Discovery News.

Comments

[hrrunka]

...and there are other factual errors in the report too. F-grade reporting.

[laffingbuddha.livejournal.com]

the planet

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

This angers me, too, though I suspect I would have been less irate with a dramatically different headline. I am reminded of once in the 1960s, when I was a mere teenager, a fan magazine (professionally published and not at all a "fanzine") said something on the cover about what each of the four Beatles would do if he found out he had only half an hour left to live. I thought this looked interesting and (I think) bought a copy of the magazine (though I may have just thumbed through it at the newsstand). It was actually a very lame writer's guess as to what each of the four would do; nobody had talked to John, Paul, Ringo or George. I am willing to bet that thousands of readers felt cheated. In any event, let's all watch and wait; if that planet is really out there, there will be *real* news about it eventually -- we hope.

Nate

[jiawen]

I always like how illos of planets like that have the dim, distant Sun pictured, but then the planet itself is mysteriously lit by some huge light source that appears to be only an AU or so away.

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

Speaking of planets, apparently there are now eleven planets in our solar system. I found that out when I read a fluffy blurb about some kid coming up with a new mnemonic for the planets. Ye gods.

*rummage* Here we go. Nat Geo contest.

Interestingly enough, it still lists Pluto.

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That said, that's a pretty sad piece of reporting.