Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Wow.

The headline for this story should have just been "Yeah, but..." and the subhead (absent on most online stories) should have read "New planet with possible temperatures supporting life found ... or maybe it doesn't support life ... well, it looks promising enough," and then the author of the story should have told me not to read it because it doesn't tell me any new information.

Oh yeah, and it lies.

And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

If it didn't rotate but did revolve, sunlight would slowly move across the planet's entire surface. In order for one side to remain constantly lit and the other constantly dark, it would have to rotate one full time every 13 days to match its revolutions.

Boo-yah! Take that, "AP Science Writer"! I didn't even have to take introductory astronomy to know that much -- I could have figured it out with a ball and a candle in a dark room.

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