(Note: This is the only post from me today – distraction, and this post’s topic and huge news flow, stole the morning/CP)

See that painting there? Today millions of people have seen it too. Way cool, eh? No wonder they call some exoplanets SuperEarths. It’s what prolific science illustrator-artist Lynette Cook concocted to depict Gliese 581g, a planet of a red dwarf star just 20 light years away. Word of this planet’s existence was greeted yesterday afternoon and this morning by an explosion of news stories. Detonating it was a DC press conference, pre-print on line of an upcoming paper in Astrophysical Journal, video, press releases … a full p.r. drumline. This may be the biggest non-medical, purely gee-whiz  science story to briefly, abruptly captivate media since Ardi the genuine pre-human ancestral relative, maybe even since Ida, the overhyped but distant conceivable but probably not-ancestor. Our roots a long time ago and our possible doppelgangers on a far planet seem to trigger the same fixed gaze of attention.

As for that painting,  Ms. Cook was smart to show the planet basically back lit, with one illuminated limb visible. As the planet keeps one face perennially, tidally locked to its tiny star, we see a stretch along the terminator between a dark, deeply frozen hemisphere and a bright, deeply cooked one. But those and land-o’-lakes dappling of blue water? That’s the thing about artist’s impressions. They’re eye candy to stimulate imagination. They may have only slight connection to the science. That picture, however, may drive the public’s imagination more than any number of paragraphs of text, however well-crafted.

The image may be plausible. Barely. Indulge me here, but one thinks there would be NO liquid water on such a place – it’d all freeze out on the dark side, building an immense ice cap stiff as granite under the endless night. Maybe outlet glaciers could get enough heat from sun-side-spawned windstorms to crawl into the light, melt, sublimate, make clouds and rain and seas and generate a weird hydrological cycle? Again maybe. Pure guess: fat chance.

The news is that Gliese 487a star’s planetary system, which has been studied for 11 years and often to great publicity before, has now yielded Doppler-shift data implying the best planet yet (see Earlier Post for news on previous ones, with another artist’s impression). This one seems to be in the Goldilocks zone where temperatures, on average, should permit liquid water on any solid planet. The inferred new one is small, not much bigger in diameter than Earth, and about three times as massive (don’t forget – spherical mass goes as the cube of radius). But its existence is reason to think scads of other stars may have habitable zones occupied by Earthlike planets. One  might some day, if we get far better telescopes to look closely, vindicate that painting up there.

There is a quote issue to discuss. The paper’s lead author (among six),  UC Santa Cruz’s Steve Vogt, enthused at the teleconference that he, personally, is 100 percent confident there is life on this planet. Okay. That’s his guess and vigorously phrased, as you’ll see reading accounts. But such things demand careful treatment. A scientist-says statement, if not further addressed,  implies that it reflects what is in the formal report too. A reporter should ask, “Really? Would you publish those odds in a refereed paper?” Back would surely come an answer along the lines of: C’mon, are you kidding? No!

But alas, several reporters did not couch the remark as the giddy small talk it was. One exception is at the NYTimes, where Dennis Overbye uses the quote and immediately follows up by getting the response from a co-author that he prefers data. Ergo, no way is it 100 percent sure. Overbye thus has it both ways in a good sense of the term – the quote for impact, and the context to assure readers how it was framed, and not to take it too literally.

*UPDATE 1: One learns from participants that the audio call-in for questions during the teleconference was spotty, so most had to email questions. Many did follow up the 100% remark for clarification and got some satisfaction – but the give-and-take of a traditional press conference was absent.

*UPDATE 2: At Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson has two stories. The first lays out the news, apparently largely from the UCSC press release, with attribution. More interesting is a second, more analytical piece focussed largely on that “100 percent” line from Vogt. which she calls the spark for “wild speculation” on the meaning of these findings. She’s careful and smart, and quotes to good effect some of the twitter twaffic (@Gliese581_G) on the statement and what it meant and on its impact.

Other Stories:

• AP – Seth Borenstein : Could ‘Goldilocks’ planet be just right for life? ; We get an insight into the reporting process here, as Borenstein says “five outside astronomers told (AP) it seems to be the real thing.” That’s a lot of phoning or emailing around. Nice job, too, explaining without describing them all that the list of things we don’t know about this world is very, very long. One biggie: it’s atmosphere’s constituents.
• NPR All Things Considered – Joe Palca: ‘Godilocks’ Planet’s Temperature Just Right for Life ; The story comes to life with audio excerpts from the scientists, neatly bridged by Palca’s own remarks.
• San Jose Mercury News – Lisa Krieger: Newly discovered planet may be habitable ; For her, it’s largely a local story. Interesting side light – the once-mighty LA Times picked up this story and the AP’s on line, but did not report it in house.
• Washington Post – Marc Kaufman: First “habitable zone’ planet found outside solar system ; Good inclusion on history – that among the paper’s authors are some from the pioneering teams that first reported extrasolar planets in 1995. This is funny: he says warmth loving creatures could live on the sunnier side of the temperate band, and polar bears on the other. That’s ok, readers will surely know it’s parable built on data. He further has a nice touch on the red dwarf’s long lifetime for evolution. See also Joel Achenbach blog, Gliese 581g, with  some sober common sense; and Alexandra Petri blog, Hi “new planet” Gliese 581G! Welcome to the neighborhood! , Light, with vampires yet, and she lists the planet’s twitter presence.
• ScienceNews – Laura Sanders: Distant world could support life ; Welcome explanation how an active atmosphere might keep things from totally freezing on the dark side. (Dept of Self-Serving Verbiage: Check the S/N site’s left side pic of the magazine and cover story on an event horizon telescope to take pictures of ultramassive black holes, which I wrote.)
• BBC – Katia Moskvitch: A distant Earth-like exoplanet ‘could have life’ ; Speaking of fanciful artist’s impressions, check this one, complete with exo-pterosaurs. And really, as Earth-like exoplanets go, this one is not distant.
• Time Mag – Michael Lemonick: Found: An Earthlike Planet at Last ; This story is among the best of the lot, and the lead is nice. It sets up the reader, it shows astronomical savvy, and it manages to seduce without giving it all away at the start. Plus, he throws in a knowing aside on the rivalry of sorts between the first-line doppler shift planet hunters, and the new throng using the Kepler and other telescopes to see planets casting transitory shadows on their host stars. I say rivalry of sorts because some astronomers are doing both.
• Sky & Telescope – Alan MacRobert: First “Potentially Habitable” Planet Announced ; Expert, if slightly jaded, report. This is, he assures his readers who may already have guessed it,  not as revolutionary as most media may make it out to be. He helpfully refers his savvy reader to the full paper and an introduction “more readable than research papers often are..”
• Montreal Gazette: ‘Habitable’ planet found outside solar system ;
• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: Aliens planet looks ‘just right’ for life ; Another expertly written account – with a welcome aside to put context on remarks, at the press conference, on the plausibility of building a rocket ship and visiting this place.
• Register – Lewis Page: Habitable Alien World discovered 20 light-years away! I clicked on this, wondering how long before a boffin appeared, betting on second sentence. It’s the second word. page bollixes the technology employed, suggesting the Doppler method was newly used to add this planet to the earlier Gliese list. Same method was used to compile the earlier ones, too.
• Mirror (UK) Mike Swain: Astronomers find another Earth… just 20 light years away.
• Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: New Earth-like planet discovered:
• Independent (UK) Steve Connor: Not too hot, not too cold: could the “Goldilocks’ planet support life? ;
• Telegraph (UK) Heidi Blake: Alien life certain to exist on Earth-like planet, scientists say ; Oh sigh. Only one scientist said it, and then with heavy personal qualification. Well, it’s true in one literal aspect : somewhere surely is an Earth-like planet with life, even aside from ours. The hed is lousy. Blake did not write that, one assumes, and her story is sensible if not adventuresome.
• Space.com – Mike Wall: Alien World Tour: The Exoplanets Around Star Gliese 581 ; Roundup on this star’s new and previous news events.
• Astronomy Now (UK) Emily Baldwin, Keith Cooper: Goldilocks exoworld discovered ;
• Popular Science ; Clay Dillow: Odds of Alien Life on Newly Spotted Exoplanet Are “100 Percent” Says Its Discoverer ; Oh, sigh, again. Oddly, even with the artists’s impression of 581g available widely, Pos Sci uses an old one of another of the star’s family. The hed on Dillow’s piece is extreme; the piece tempers that considerably.
• Scientific American – John Matson : Planet Hunters Discover a World That Could Harbor Life ; Nice job calling around, including comment from Geoff Marcy – a pioneer in doppler shift planet hunting who is now splitting his time with the newer transit method and the Kepler project.
• National Geographic – John Roach: First Truly Habitable Planet Discovered, Experts Say ;
• Bad Astronomy (blog) Phil Plait: Possible earthlike planet found in the Goldilocks zone of a nearby star! ;
• Daily Mail (UK) Niall Firth: Does ET LIve on Goldilocks planet? How scientists spotted ‘mysterious pulse of light’ from direction of newly-discovered ’2d Earth’ two years ago ; In tabloid-land, hooking this news to a small report awhile ago that a possible SETI signal briefly arose from the same planetary system is a scoop. There is a nugget of fact in this : The Australian (May 2009): Watch This Space ; There also is a nugget of utter error. Firth id’s the star as a red giant near the end of its life. Nope, ’tis a red dwarf, still young (Note – that error later fixed).
• .. there are many more.

Grist for the Mill:

UC Santa Cruz Press Release ; U. Hawaii Inst. for Astronomy Press Release ; NASA Press Release ; Carnegie Institution for Science Press Release ; National Science Foundation Press Release with related video, pics.

Apj Paper (via arXiv.org)

- Charlie Petit

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