Did you hear? They’ve discovered a new planet in another solar system that is perfect for life. This article even refers to it as “just like Earth.”
Except it’s three times the size of Earth.
It’s 79 million mile closer to its sun, which is a dwarf star and about 1/3 the size of our Sun.
It’s year is 37 days.
It doesn’t rotate much so there is one side that’s in perpetual day and one that’s in perpetual night.
And no one knows what the atmosphere is made of, or whether there’s water on it.
It’s interesting to me when articles come out about the world of science because they inevitably emphasize the speculative aspects of the discovery and what it might possibly mean more than what was actually found. And everything is presented as something absolute. This phenomenon is illustrated quite well in this xkcd comic referencing the recent headlines about Stephen Hawking.
Here’s my favorite line from the article.
Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone.
I have no problem with the science. I think it’s pretty fascinating stuff. I just think the media sometimes comes across as if they’re really excited but don’t really understand what about.