'Most Earth-Like' Exoplanet Gets Major Demotion

audiovideodisco writes "Last month, the team behind NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planetary candidate ever spotted: KOI 326.01, an approximately Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. There was much excitement; one astrophysicist even calculated the value of the new planet as exactly $223,099.93. But when an innocent fact-checker's question sent one of the researchers back to look at some figures, she noticed that the star's brightness was listed incorrectly in a reference catalog, throwing the planet's properties into doubt. After jiggering the calculations, the Kepler team now says that KOI 326.01 is neither Earth-sized nor in the habitable zone, and may actually be orbiting a different star. The Kepler researcher says, 'We're seeing the scientific method playing out in real time.' While this news is a bit of a downer, Kepler is just getting going, and it's expected to find many, many more Earth-like planets."

Really ..

[bsquizzato]

After jiggering the calculations, the Kepler team now says that KOI 326.01 is neither Earth-sized nor in the habitable zone, and may actually be orbiting a different star

"Sooo ... about everything we said, it's actually the complete opposite"

Epic fail.

Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

[sourcerror]

Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

Re:Scientific method or fact checking

[Whalou]

I never look at the pictures, I only read the articles.

Why must NASA crush so many dreams?

[makubesu]

Here they had built up this poor young planet to be something of worth. They were promising all kinds of fame and fortune, telling her to leave behind her friends and family and devote herself to being the next Earth. The crazy parties, the celebrities endorsing her, they built up her dreams of fame, and gave up any other kind of success. Now they dump her dry because they ended up making some mistakes in their data analysis. All she's got left now is a lingering coke addiction. Don't you see they used her up and rang her dry? She had so much potential to be special in some other way, but now she'll just be remembered as another failure, probably turning tricks in the dark corners of the galaxy. We need to keep these hype monsters away from our planets.