We are trying to get rid of imperial measurement in most of the world not encourage it.
Quote from: Alpha_Centauri on 01/21/2019 02:41 pmSensationalist reporting really damages people's understanding of science. [snip]Thanks Alpha. You expressed my sentiments far better than I did.By no means am I discounting the possibility of the shepherding being accounted for by a massive TNO/Ort Cloud disk. What I am saying is, exactly as you expressed, articles like that do more damage than good for the scientific community. When a researcher proposes something they need to (1) present some solid empirical data that actually supports their theory and (2) acknowledge all known shortcomings of their theory and provide at least some genuinely reasonable arguments adjudicating the shortcomings. The referenced article did acknowledge the massive mass shortcoming but not as a shortcoming - and - separated the required mass vs. the scientifically accepted mass by several paragraphs, a shortcoming that the casual reader would thus have totally missed.
Sensationalist reporting really damages people's understanding of science. [snip]
Yes to be clear I'm not arguing in favour or against either idea (just that the disk idea is no more compelling, and not without issues), the real problem is the way journalists inject fake drama into the whole thing and distort what the scientific consensus on the topic is.
Quote from: Alpha_Centauri on 01/21/2019 05:17 pmYes to be clear I'm not arguing in favour or against either idea (just that the disk idea is no more compelling, and not without issues), the real problem is the way journalists inject fake drama into the whole thing and distort what the scientific consensus on the topic is.Models are only representation of known or possible relationships between data. They are all wrong to some degree or other. In this case, the data are sparse and have multiple possible explanations and therefore modeled relationships. That causes scientists to propose multiple, competing explanations. Eventually, one model (or type of model) tends to be accepted by the community. In this case, that could come from finding another large planet, no discovery of a planet for a long time (although you can't prove a negative, just convince most knowledgeable folks that it is highly unlikely), or someone comes up with a model that fits the data much better than any current attempt.So the back and forth is to be expected.
Quote from: vjkane on 01/21/2019 07:24 pmQuote from: Alpha_Centauri on 01/21/2019 05:17 pmYes to be clear I'm not arguing in favour or against either idea (just that the disk idea is no more compelling, and not without issues), the real problem is the way journalists inject fake drama into the whole thing and distort what the scientific consensus on the topic is.Models are only representation of known or possible relationships between data. They are all wrong to some degree or other. In this case, the data are sparse and have multiple possible explanations and therefore modeled relationships. That causes scientists to propose multiple, competing explanations. Eventually, one model (or type of model) tends to be accepted by the community. In this case, that could come from finding another large planet, no discovery of a planet for a long time (although you can't prove a negative, just convince most knowledgeable folks that it is highly unlikely), or someone comes up with a model that fits the data much better than any current attempt.So the back and forth is to be expected.I'm not talking about how science works, i'm talking about how it is communicated. When I speak of back and forth I mean sensationalist headlines of "model disproves X", when it does nothing of the sort, then almost equally certain statements when a counter-study comes along saying "new model proves X". Eventually people just give up and come to the conclusion scientists haven't a clue.
ORBITAL CLUSTERING IN THE DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEMThe most distant Kuiper belt objects appear to be clustered in longitude of perihelion and inorbital pole position. To date, the only two suggestions for the cause of these apparent clusteringshave been either the effects of observational bias or the existence of the distant giant planet in aneccentric inclined orbit known as Planet Nine. To determine if observational bias can be the cause ofthese apparent clusterings, we develop a rigorous method of quantifying the observational biases inthe observations of longitude of perihelion and orbital pole position. From this now more completeunderstanding of the biases we calculate that the probability that these distant Kuiper belt objectswould be clustered as strongly as observed in both longitude of perihelion and in orbital pole positionis only 0.2%. While explanations other than Planet Nine may someday be found, the statisticalsignificance of this clustering is now difficult to discount.
Talking about how the Planet 9 debate is being presented is hardly off topic, if you don't like it don't read it and stick to shitposting about aliens.Anyway, speaking of the devil here's Brown and Batygin's new "new model proves X" paper.http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/papers/ps/clustering.pdfQuoteORBITAL CLUSTERING IN THE DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEMThe most distant Kuiper belt objects appear to be clustered in longitude of perihelion and inorbital pole position. To date, the only two suggestions for the cause of these apparent clusteringshave been either the effects of observational bias or the existence of the distant giant planet in aneccentric inclined orbit known as Planet Nine. To determine if observational bias can be the cause ofthese apparent clusterings, we develop a rigorous method of quantifying the observational biases inthe observations of longitude of perihelion and orbital pole position. From this now more completeunderstanding of the biases we calculate that the probability that these distant Kuiper belt objectswould be clustered as strongly as observed in both longitude of perihelion and in orbital pole positionis only 0.2%. While explanations other than Planet Nine may someday be found, the statisticalsignificance of this clustering is now difficult to discount.
It would be a decent working theory if it weren't for that *massive* mass discrepancy ...
Quote from: clongton on 01/21/2019 09:59 amIt would be a decent working theory if it weren't for that *massive* mass discrepancy ...It's not obvious to me that there is a mass discrepancy. The 'Planet 9' folks are positing a 10 Earth mass planet. So in both case there are 10 Earth masses of material in the Kuiper belt. In one case it's combined into a planet; in the other it has remained small objects in a disc. And if the P9 folks can barely see a 10 Earth mass planet, why could there not be 100 x 0.1 Earth mass planetoids, or 1000 x 0.01 Earth mass planetoids? I'm not saying I believe in the disk theory, just that the mass discrepancy is not as strong a hypothesis-killer as it might seem, since the best alternative (P9) also has the same total mass in the Kuiper belt.
Finally, however, after three years, a new hypothesis has been proposed which can at least explain the alignments without Planet Nine. The basic trick is to take Planet Nine and split it up into a massive ring of bodies on an eccentric inclined orbit like that of Planet Nine’s. Because Planet Nine’s long distance gravitational effects are mostly caused by the long term average position of Planet Nine (which is basically an inclined eccentric ring!) this ring has more or less the same effects that Planet Nine has. (For the aficionados out there, read this as "Planet Nine's interactions are predominantly secular rather than resonant.")I am happy that there is finally an alternative explanation, even if that alternative is only Planet-Nine-ground-up-into-a-ring.
Just read on twitter that Mike Brown & Konstantin Batygin are going back to Subaru for further observations. What could this mean? Since they were at Subaru in December, does it mean that they found something & they are going back to confirm? There has been total radio silence on planet 9 from both Mike & Konstantin.If there is any verified news please point me to it. Thanks
Just read on twitter that Mike Brown & Konstantin Batygin are going back to Subaru for further observations. What could this mean? Since they were at Subaru in December, does it mean that they found something & they are going back to confirm? There has been total radio silence on planet 9 from both Mike & Konstantin.If there is any verified news please point me to it. Thanks
Quote from: tappa on 02/06/2019 02:53 pmJust read on twitter that Mike Brown & Konstantin Batygin are going back to Subaru for further observations. What could this mean? Since they were at Subaru in December, does it mean that they found something & they are going back to confirm? There has been total radio silence on planet 9 from both Mike & Konstantin.If there is any verified news please point me to it. ThanksAs I understand it, the data reduction on their fall run is not done yet. With the new run, they are just covering additional "territory" (areas of the sky where P9 could be). If they had found something they wanted to confirm, they would not go back to Subaru, but use a telescope with a more narrow field of view and better resolution / sensitivity. Subaru is great for looking simultaneously at large areas of the sky, which is what you want to do if you are searching for an object like P9.
Was it this? And I wonder if he was meant to say anything.https://twitter.com/astrosumo/status/1093033743252508673