Ephemeral planet

摘要

There goes the neighbourhood. Last year astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-mass planet just 4.3 light years away in the nearby Alpha Centauri system. Now a second look suggests the planet may not be there after all. Xavier Dumusque of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland and colleagues identified the planet, known as Alpha Centauri Bb, from a slight wobble in the position of Alpha Centauri B, the smaller of the two stars in the system. But Artie Hatzes of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, begs to differ. "This just doesn't smell like a solid discovery," he says, though he is happy to be proved wrong. His alternative analysis of the data suggests Bb might not exist (arxiv.org/abs/1305.4960).