4 ms·

The title is wrong. "Passing Stars Could, and Maybe Have, Changed the Orbits of Planets in the Solar System'. I guess they are going by the old journalist's ada

by mianos 3y ago

The title is wrong. "Passing Stars Could, and Maybe Have, Changed the Orbits of Planets in the Solar System'. I guess they are going by the old journalist's adage, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The paper, linked, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad24fb https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad24fb, does go into the chaotic behavior and why it's all kinda sorta made up.

NotSammyHagar 3y ago
The other rule of journalism is the author of of a piece doesn't write the headline.
- adaml_623 3y ago
  One day sub-editors will be named and shamed for the headlines they excrete onto the world
  - NotSammyHagar 3y ago
    And will be replaced by chatgpt written headlines that are focused on attracting attention even more flagrantly than today. Today even in 'real newspapers' online you see headlines like "The way to tell if your financial advisor is good is..."
vikingerik 3y ago
Well, in the "technically correct" department, the stars all do, even if it's on the order of attometers or whatever. It's set up to pass the fact-checking, so yeah, that's just about the standards of modern journalism.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I'm sick and tired of the more or less concerted attack on journalists with every opportunity. Bad media have been around as long as there have been media, if you think the standards of modern journalism have dropped you are either looking at things through a very local lens or simply not well informed about mass media through the ages. But quality content exists if you're willing to pay for it, which is how it has always been. Free content, whether in print or on the web can be very good but as a rule if it is brought to you by a commercial entity you have to always question the value of the words and their relation to commercial interests.
  - mianos 3y ago
    Whilst I agree with you, there has always been bad journalism, I have been reading the same newspaper for many years and have had a paid subscription to it. The problem is, as the paid readers fall, they are forced to use clickbait titles to attract more on line readers to click ads. Imagine a newspaper founded in 1831, using titles like, "You will never guess what she said next" as a main headline. The same here, who is going to click on "Passing stars may affect the orbits of our planets"? They know exactly what they are doing and it's not about the scientifically literate.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      The media landscape has always been shifting and business models change over time. The internet pretty much put paid newspapers out of business, circulation is a fraction of what it used to be. TV started it, the internet ended it. So just like with everything else it changes, just like you don't normally complain about how 'art galleries show crap today' because your favorite art galleries have gone down the tubes you move to new ones or you directly patronize the artists that you like. A similar thing happens to journalism.
      - effingwewt 3y ago
        I get where you are coming from, but journalists today aren't real journalists. Public trust in media is at an all-time low for a reason. I understand that real journalism must be paid for, but allowing megacorps to buy up all maintream media was a huge mistake and now they are all corporate mouthpieces. I don't know what the answer is, but trusting 'journalists' of today is not it. The head of journalism at my college warned us of this over a decade ago, and he didn't have the answer either. They lost their ethics in search of clicks and clout and cry foul when they aren't believed. They use divisive language, outright lie, holy crap this election cycle will be a shitshow. There's no unbiased truth finders anymore. The ones I feel sorry for are the real journalists drowned out by the fake.
rob74 3y ago
...or in this case, "state theories as if they were facts if it makes a good headline"?
adrian_b 3y ago
Given how close the star HD 7977 was 2.8 million years ago, many times closer than any star today, it is pretty much certain that its passage has perturbed the orbits of the planets. What is uncertain is only which were the changes, i.e. which were the orbits of the planets prior to the star passing. The changes must have been very small, but they must have existed. The point of the paper is that this stellar passing and others like it increase by a non-negligible amount the uncertainty of the simulations that attempt to determine accurately the planetary movements in the distant past of the Solar System, at scales of tens of millions of years. The star HD 7977 is slightly bigger and brighter than the Sun, so when it has passed at the minimum distance there are chances that it was noticeably brighter than Venus.
- skywal_l 3y ago
  In the same vein, Gliese 710 will pass even closer at 0.16 ly from the Sun in 1.29 million years which add uncertainty to the simulation of the distant future.

by mianos 3y ago

NotSammyHagar 3y ago

The other rule of journalism is the author of of a piece doesn't write the headline.

adaml_623 3y ago
One day sub-editors will be named and shamed for the headlines they excrete onto the world
- NotSammyHagar 3y ago
  And will be replaced by chatgpt written headlines that are focused on attracting attention even more flagrantly than today. Today even in 'real newspapers' online you see headlines like "The way to tell if your financial advisor is good is..."

vikingerik 3y ago

Well, in the "technically correct" department, the stars all do, even if it's on the order of attometers or whatever. It's set up to pass the fact-checking, so yeah, that's just about the standards of modern journalism.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 3y ago
I'm sick and tired of the more or less concerted attack on journalists with every opportunity. Bad media have been around as long as there have been media, if you think the standards of modern journalism have dropped you are either looking at things through a very local lens or simply not well informed about mass media through the ages. But quality content exists if you're willing to pay for it, which is how it has always been. Free content, whether in print or on the web can be very good but as a rule if it is brought to you by a commercial entity you have to always question the value of the words and their relation to commercial interests.
- mianos 3y ago
  Whilst I agree with you, there has always been bad journalism, I have been reading the same newspaper for many years and have had a paid subscription to it. The problem is, as the paid readers fall, they are forced to use clickbait titles to attract more on line readers to click ads. Imagine a newspaper founded in 1831, using titles like, "You will never guess what she said next" as a main headline. The same here, who is going to click on "Passing stars may affect the orbits of our planets"? They know exactly what they are doing and it's not about the scientifically literate.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    The media landscape has always been shifting and business models change over time. The internet pretty much put paid newspapers out of business, circulation is a fraction of what it used to be. TV started it, the internet ended it. So just like with everything else it changes, just like you don't normally complain about how 'art galleries show crap today' because your favorite art galleries have gone down the tubes you move to new ones or you directly patronize the artists that you like. A similar thing happens to journalism.
    - effingwewt 3y ago
      I get where you are coming from, but journalists today aren't real journalists. Public trust in media is at an all-time low for a reason. I understand that real journalism must be paid for, but allowing megacorps to buy up all maintream media was a huge mistake and now they are all corporate mouthpieces. I don't know what the answer is, but trusting 'journalists' of today is not it. The head of journalism at my college warned us of this over a decade ago, and he didn't have the answer either. They lost their ethics in search of clicks and clout and cry foul when they aren't believed. They use divisive language, outright lie, holy crap this election cycle will be a shitshow. There's no unbiased truth finders anymore. The ones I feel sorry for are the real journalists drowned out by the fake.

rob74 3y ago

...or in this case, "state theories as if they were facts if it makes a good headline"?

adrian_b 3y ago

Given how close the star HD 7977 was 2.8 million years ago, many times closer than any star today, it is pretty much certain that its passage has perturbed the orbits of the planets. What is uncertain is only which were the changes, i.e. which were the orbits of the planets prior to the star passing. The changes must have been very small, but they must have existed. The point of the paper is that this stellar passing and others like it increase by a non-negligible amount the uncertainty of the simulations that attempt to determine accurately the planetary movements in the distant past of the Solar System, at scales of tens of millions of years. The star HD 7977 is slightly bigger and brighter than the Sun, so when it has passed at the minimum distance there are chances that it was noticeably brighter than Venus.

skywal_l 3y ago
In the same vein, Gliese 710 will pass even closer at 0.16 ly from the Sun in 1.29 million years which add uncertainty to the simulation of the distant future.