A planetary rant
Feb. 28th, 2008 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guppiecatIf 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.
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.
