Sadly, they have a video embedded in the article that at first glance seems informational, but it's really just an "action" animation of the solar system. They could really just have shown the orbit this thing in a diagram or something.
I was on the verge of subscribing to it not too long ago till I did some research. It seems to have moved into a more sensationalist click-baitesque sphere.
A shame, but I suppose from their perspective it must have been a case of "if you can't beat them, join them".
I remember them being described as "The National Enquirer of Science" a good 10 years ago.
Just today I was in the Library and looking at "Science" and "Scientific American" both of which seem to be a lot more "popularist" than I remember them from when i was a kid, but maybe I just didn't notice then.
I'm planning on subscribing to one of these, currently favoring Scientific American after flipping through some copies at the library. What (if anything) would people recommend instead?
I work as a scientist, so I don't want over-popularised clickbait.
As a layman I find Scientific American goes into sufficient detail that I learn new things but is still approachable enough for me to grasp. They also seem to generally avoid sensationalist writing, providing plenty of caveats when discussing something theoretical or unproven.
They are no strangers to sensationalism, even outside of click-bait.
A 2009 cover was "Darwin was wrong." It was a sensationalist way to describe that Darwin's thoughts on a tree-of-life is incorrect, because there is also horizontal gene transfer. Not that it matters, as his proposal for evolution is based on the more general 'descent with modification'.
For many years I used to subscribe to them (both Digital and Print) and received my issues on weds/thurs every week through my letterbox.
After a while, it became abundantly clear that the main articles were always 'leaked' to other news sites ahead of the issue publication (as a promotional thing I guess), and more often than not, I found that I had already read all the key information of the articles online up to 3 days before my weekly New Scientist hit the doormat.
It led me to question what exactly I was paying for, so I canceled my subs. I did lose full access to their website, but as I'm just an armchair scientist, that's no real hardship to be honest.
I would be interested if there is something out there between New Scientist and 'full on' peer reviewed journals that I'd probably not be able to digest.
EDIT : I am a member if IEEE - if anyone knows a way to get a 'better' Spectrum magazine format please let me know too!
New Scientist was always aimed at the general reader, but like many other publications they've gone downhill in the web era, aiming for clicks above all else. The freeloading public must share the blame for this. If you find a magazine you like, please subscribe so they can pay their bills.
I inherit the copies my father gets. It certianly isn't what it was which as you say is sad. I shall look into this publication, thanks for the mention.
Science News [1] is a small, bi-weekly publication that is much less heavy on advertising and dumbed-down articles. I have let my paper subscription lapse (along with most magazines I once took), but it is a good alternative.
Even into the 90s, my (biotech) employer at the time would advertise in New Scientist because that’s where the readership was. I agree that it wasn’t great then, but today’s NS is another level of awful.
That video in the article was the biggest load of ... I can't even find a word to describe how awfully irrelevant and non informational it was. They obviously had an intern sitting around and they needed to give them a job creating some animations for a day...
In any case, if they do find planet 9.5, I hope they call it 'Rupert' as a tribute to Douglas Adams...
I just clicked into the comments here to say exactly that. The article is a load of cobblers.
There's not even an informative diagram to illustrate that planetary body's oddness.
As for that embedded video - yuck!
It would have been better for the submitter here to have just supplied the paper's URL, said paper even has informative diagrams : http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01808
The original article says that estimated probability of observed configuration of objects appearing by random chance without some unknown, common cause is 3.8 sigma (0.016%).
For comparison (in an apples-to-oranges kind of a way), the recently falsified diphoton anomaly detected by CERN that made news in 2015 was 2.9 sigma or about 25 times more likely to appear by chance.
Although this is based on just 6 detected objects, it's a strong indication that some yet-unknown mechanism is in play.
In an allegedly scientific journal? I was aware that New Scientist had abandoned scientific standards, but this abandons even a patina of scientific standards.
I don't think the author and editor of that headline wants the wording to be taken literally, believing it to be supernatural and outside the realm of causality.
Instead, what they're trying to drum up attention for in the headline is that it can be explained, but only by the activity of a previously. unknown force, astronomical phenomenon, planet, or other new and interesting potential discovery. Such as aliens.
The headline should read "... is unlikely to be caused by existing models and behavioral simulations of the solar system", but that's less likely to get clicks.
That, or "Discovery of A New Retrograde Trans-Neptunian Object: Hint of A Common Orbital Plane for Low Semi-Major Axis, High Inclination TNOs and Centaurs", which is the title of the backing paper.
> This one is 160,000 times fainter than Neptune, which means the icy world could be less than 200 kilometres in diameter. It’s currently above the plane of the solar system and with every passing day, it’s moving upwards – a fact that makes it an oddity.
We know of much bigger objects out that far, and highly inclined orbits ("moving upward") in that region are expected.
Small icy trans-neptune object in high ecliptic, very eccentric orbit, counter directional orbit.
So it was captured from inter-galactic space? I mainly like this theory because it'll force Bayesian Astronomers to re-calculate the density of inter-galactic planetoids.
I guess we can discuss multiple Neptune/Uranus like ice giants orbiting at the fringes of the Sun's gravity. But wouldn't that seem to violate Occam's Razor?
I read it as "cannot currently be explained." I didn't think it was so bad. The rest of the article was kind of crummy though. Science journalism sucks.
47 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 97.2 ms ] threadA shame, but I suppose from their perspective it must have been a case of "if you can't beat them, join them".
Just today I was in the Library and looking at "Science" and "Scientific American" both of which seem to be a lot more "popularist" than I remember them from when i was a kid, but maybe I just didn't notice then.
I work as a scientist, so I don't want over-popularised clickbait.
A 2009 cover was "Darwin was wrong." It was a sensationalist way to describe that Darwin's thoughts on a tree-of-life is incorrect, because there is also horizontal gene transfer. Not that it matters, as his proposal for evolution is based on the more general 'descent with modification'.
After a while, it became abundantly clear that the main articles were always 'leaked' to other news sites ahead of the issue publication (as a promotional thing I guess), and more often than not, I found that I had already read all the key information of the articles online up to 3 days before my weekly New Scientist hit the doormat.
It led me to question what exactly I was paying for, so I canceled my subs. I did lose full access to their website, but as I'm just an armchair scientist, that's no real hardship to be honest.
EDIT : I am a member if IEEE - if anyone knows a way to get a 'better' Spectrum magazine format please let me know too!
New Scientist was always aimed at the general reader, but like many other publications they've gone downhill in the web era, aiming for clicks above all else. The freeloading public must share the blame for this. If you find a magazine you like, please subscribe so they can pay their bills.
1: https://www.sciencenews.org/
In any case, if they do find planet 9.5, I hope they call it 'Rupert' as a tribute to Douglas Adams...
The intern probably just did the animated wordy bits.
There's not even an informative diagram to illustrate that planetary body's oddness.
As for that embedded video - yuck!
It would have been better for the submitter here to have just supplied the paper's URL, said paper even has informative diagrams : http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01808
I hated it too and I hated it even more because I fell for it and played it.
For comparison (in an apples-to-oranges kind of a way), the recently falsified diphoton anomaly detected by CERN that made news in 2015 was 2.9 sigma or about 25 times more likely to appear by chance.
Although this is based on just 6 detected objects, it's a strong indication that some yet-unknown mechanism is in play.
Who invents headlines like these?
I can't be the only one who thought the title reeked of clickbait.
...
Yes it is."
In an allegedly scientific journal? I was aware that New Scientist had abandoned scientific standards, but this abandons even a patina of scientific standards.
Instead, what they're trying to drum up attention for in the headline is that it can be explained, but only by the activity of a previously. unknown force, astronomical phenomenon, planet, or other new and interesting potential discovery. Such as aliens.
The headline should read "... is unlikely to be caused by existing models and behavioral simulations of the solar system", but that's less likely to get clicks.
That, or "Discovery of A New Retrograde Trans-Neptunian Object: Hint of A Common Orbital Plane for Low Semi-Major Axis, High Inclination TNOs and Centaurs", which is the title of the backing paper.
This sounds like a mild understatement...
We know of much bigger objects out that far, and highly inclined orbits ("moving upward") in that region are expected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trans-Neptunian_object...
So it was captured from inter-galactic space? I mainly like this theory because it'll force Bayesian Astronomers to re-calculate the density of inter-galactic planetoids.
I guess we can discuss multiple Neptune/Uranus like ice giants orbiting at the fringes of the Sun's gravity. But wouldn't that seem to violate Occam's Razor?