The two astronomers are actually a husband and wife team whom I happen to know. It's kind of funny picturing them disagreeing about their finding while talking to the reporter. Anyway, this is an interesting look at the process of science:
Astronomers Debate Whether Oldest Known Dust Disk Will Ever Form PlanetsCambridge, MA--Every rule has an exception. One rule in astronomy, supported by considerable evidence, states that dust disks around newborn stars disappear in a few million years. Most likely, they vanish because the material has collected into full-sized planets. Astronomers have discovered the first exception to this rule - a 25-million-year-old dust disk that shows no evidence of planet formation.
"Finding this disk is as unexpected as locating a 200-year-old person," said astronomer Lee Hartmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper announcing the find.
...
Hartmann and {co-author Nuria} Calvet hold opposite opinions about the eventual fate of the disk....
"Most stars, by the age of 10 million years, have done whatever they're going to do," said Hartmann. "If it hasn't made planets by now, it probably never will."
Calvet disagreed. "This disk still has a lot of gas in it, so it may still form giant planets."
Both astronomers emphasize that such debates are a natural part of the scientific process.
"Some people expect scientists to have all the answers. But research is all about exploring the edge of what is known," said Hartmann. "That's what makes it so exciting!"
...
continued at
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/pr0525.htmlnote to mods: Please consider making an exception to the four-paragraph rule. The series of quotations at the end of my excerpt is short and is essential to the story. :)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
