RE: Earths difficult?

From: Damien Broderick (thespike@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Jan 28 2003 - 20:14:06 MST


Robert J. Bradbury sez

> Seems to be a reasonably balanced perspective from the BBC.

Balanced? What balanced?

> There are however still "selection effects" at work
> in the production of the data on which the conclusions
> are based.

Well, yes. If the only stars they could see were supernovae, they'd
doubtless reach the same conclusion: that there can't be too many earthlike
planets around them, and hence <here a miracle of illogic seems to occur>
around *any* stars. D'oh.

But maybe there's more nuance in the actual Astrophysical Journal paper.

Damien Broderick



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