[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

One concern I've been worrying, like a bone, over the last several years, is the very tiny bits of data, barely above the noise level, upon which so many new "discoveries" seem to be based.

We're characterizing planetary systems based on the wiggles of stars -- when in some cases those wiggles are so far down near the level of chaotic noise vs. solid, unambiguous data that there could be other reasons (including sensor-induced noise) to account for them.

And as we build fairy castles out of data gleaned just barely above the noise level, we base further conclusions upon "understandings" that themselves are based on far too many single-point data points pulled from nearly-unreadable noise.

I'm not arguing that all of these discoveries are bogus. I'm just wondering how far we ought to go in trying to pull information out of noise. And I'm wondering just how much some of these detectors are designed to display what the PI wants to see -- not what's really out there.

-the other Doug

[climber]

Talking about star occultation, there's a post on Emily's blog : http://planetary.org/blog/article/00000579/
Want to be the fist one to see new Pluto's sattellites with your own eyes dvandorn?
Hurry up to New Zealand ***

*** Tasmania, there's the Tasmania's devil, Reunion's full of Mosquitos with Chicungunia, Australia's full of Australians (Astro0's fine anyway)

[ljk4-1]

Talking about star occultation, there's a post on Emily's blog : http://planetary.org/blog/article/00000579/
Want to be the fist one to see new Pluto's sattellites with your own eyes dvandorn?
Hurry up to New Zealand ***

*** Tasmania, there's the Tasmania's devil, Reunion's full of Mosquitos with Chicungunia, Australia's full of Australians (Astro0's fine anyway)

I have already started a thread on this very topic:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=54453

As the Web site states, I hope the occultations will be useful to the New Horizons team,
as moon P2 will also occult the star, a first for such observations.

[Bob Shaw]

I really don't see why there's any need to spend any more money on these grand planet-forming enquiries - we know perfectly well how, and why, the planets were formed - indeed, we have done since the late 1960s.

Bob Shaw

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