A news item involving Alpha Centauri Bb was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 17 October 2012.

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Confirmed ?? or not ?? False Detection probability please[edit]

Some websites appear to state that Alpha Centauri Bb is confirmed and some state that it is still awaiting confirmation. With this in mind, i would like to know the false detection probability of this planet. --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 09:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The Nature paper gives a False Alarm Probability (FAP) of 1%. But I wouldn't describe it as 'confirmed' until it's also found in an independent data set. Modest Genius ^talk 11:56, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The news article I read last night (on NBCNews.com) said it was more like 0.1%.--Omega13a (talk) 18:36, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think Nature is a better source for such information than NBC. Modest Genius ^talk 14:24, 13 November 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We can't say it is confirmed in the article until the discoverers or another trustworthy astronomical source announces the confirmation. StringTheory11 (t • c) 04:38, 18 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Bad style[edit]

My removal of style faux-pas such as "wobble method" were reverted with the note that Google sources turn up - without such a source being added. I removed it again, it's still bad style regardless of Google sources and sounds childish. The comparison with "the speed of a baby's crawl" that follows is in the given source but still silly in contrast with the very precise number of 51 cm/s given. Letting the fact speak for itself makes for better style. Hekerui (talk) 08:21, 19 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

"Wobble method" is a common terminology familiar to everyone in the field (see, for example, this article). It is not your perogative to decide that we can't use a widespread term because you don't like it. Judgements on style are made collectively. Additionally, we don't need to provide citations for every term we use in an article. WolfmanSF (talk) 09:08, 19 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Agree with Wolfman. The article should mention the commonly-used term so the reader will understand it elsewhere and can, for example, Search for it. The current paragraph without the repetitions of "wobble" is however an improvement: avoiding repetition is a widely accepted stylistic aim. --Mirokado (talk) 09:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The wobble of a star could also be detected by astrometry, e.g. by the upcoming Gaia (spacecraft) so the term wobble method is ambiguous. Typesometext (talk) 17:46, 19 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Maybe potentially ambiguous, but not ambiguous in current usage. Why quibble? WolfmanSF (talk) 19:08, 19 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I added the "baby crawling" part. Centimeters per second are not common units for measurement of speed, and the average reader will not know how slow this is. Real-world context is important. Paradoxically, bombarding readers with precise scientific data can lead to confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.131.193.65 (talk) 18:34, 20 October 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

'Wobble method' is a term only used in press releases and news reports. In the scientific literature, the terms 'radial velocity method' or 'Doppler method' are used. Using 'wobble method' is comparable to giving equivalent measurements in 'size of a double decker bus' or 'an area the size of Wales'. None of those should be in a serious encyclopaedia article. Nor should any description of babies crawling (that would be a very fast baby anyway). Modest Genius ^talk 14:31, 13 November 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You've succeeded in making the article more factual and less readable. Perhaps we should dispense with sentences entirely and simply list scientific data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.131.193.65 (talk) 16:47, 15 November 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is it actually supported by the data?[edit]

Artie Hatzes has put a paper on the arXiv which suggests this detection should be treated with caution. [1] 46.126.77.137 (talk) 17:45, 23 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This article should be updated then. --Artman40 (talk) 12:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Merge (2015)[edit]

No consensus to merge. The proposed planet almost certainly doesn't exist and could plausibly be merged, on the other hand there is enough source coverage for the event itself to plausibly support its own article. Note: A previous close was preformed by an involved, blocked, sock account. That close have been reverted.

My count is 3 (unlabeled) Merge votes in the upper text, and 5 labeled Opposes in the lower area. I have discounted Davidbuddy9's bad faith attempt to vote & sock-close. I have also discounted the IP vote as unreliable. I have concrete evidence supporting that conclusion, but I decline to explain further per BEANS and policy reasons. Alsee (talk) 01:03, 9 April 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The paper "Ghost in the time series: no planet for Alpha Cen B" http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.05598 Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters, says that it almost certainly is a spurious data artifact, so suggest merge this article with parent star article. Fdfexoex (talk) 17:33, 20 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

agreed although the paper title is annoying.©Geni (talk) 22:51, 21 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This doesn't affect Bc. That article was nominated for deletion but there was no consensus. Fdfexoex (talk) 00:30, 25 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Perhaps Geni was asking whether any new exoplanets would start with "c" or "d" or "b" if indeed this "b" was not actually an exoplanet. Kortoso (talk)

I can't be settle yet until there is more data on it with for example the ESPRESSO instrument coming online next year. ESPRESSO should be able to give a definitive answer .Quantanew (talk) 14:43, 23 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Here's a couple more news refs for this

Fdfexoex (talk) 18:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Let's go ahead and merge.Kortoso (talk) 18:01, 28 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've redirected to the star page. Fdfexoex (talk) 10:57, 4 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comment @Fdfexoex:@Kortoso: This was poorly conducted consensus, an RfC should've been opened and this should have been posted on WP:AST's talk page. This merger is as terrible as the Gliese 581 and Gliese 667C mergers. The reason why I say the Merger has been conducted terribly is that the information about the planet has been thrown out the window! Please open up and RfC and get proper consensus about this. I wasn't able to comment because you didn't make this noticeable! Davidbuddy9 (talk) 00:39, 6 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Agree there was a rush to do this no debate disregarding objections. ShamefulQuantanew (talk) 05:36, 6 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In my opinion: at this point, any exoplanet is little more than a feature of a star. I mean when we say "exoplanet" we really mean "statistical fluctuations in a star's perceived output". It may be premature to create a new Wikipedia article for each and every theoretical exoplanet that's been detected. Kortoso (talk) 17:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

So the Earth is just a little feature of the Sun? That sounds interesting. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 02:19, 18 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Oppose, as per Quantanew, we should wait for more info on the subject to prevent things like the Gliese 581 issue where one year the planet exists the next it doesn't and then the next it does. Plus it did capture wide media attention so I would say that it would meet WP:GNG. There are pages on Wikipedia that talk about hypothetical, unconfirmed, proposed, and even disputed exoplanets. I really don't see why delete the article as Alpha Centauri Bb will always be a proposed planet (There will never be another Bb in the system). Now if the merger does go, I would like to mention that the planets characteristics (Mass, Radius, orbital period, semi-major, eccentricity etc) should be included in the merged remnant. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 19:12, 8 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose: I have no issues with this remaining a separate article. Putting the planet's discovery into serious doubt doesn't make the subject non-notable, and there is sufficient content here to maintain it as a separate page. At this point it's a history article. Praemonitus (talk) 18:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose:My objections are clear Quantanew (talk) 01:09, 11 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose Sometimes it may be good to combine topics, but its probably better to keep these separate. They are both quite long, and one is about a star, one is about a planet so it makes it easier to categorize when they are separate. Thank you Fotaun (talk) 16:13, 13 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose: Gliese 581 d and Gliese 581 g was merged with Gliese 581 because it was thought that Gliese 581 d was "an artifact of stellar activity which, when incompletely corrected, causes the false detection of planet g."[2] It later turned out that Gliese 581 d could exist after all and that g could exist to since it was dependent on the eccentricity of d. I think that Alpha Centauri Bb could be proven to exist in the future and even if it turns out to be a false positive it is still much more important then Neith in my opinion. MartinZ02 (talk) 23:08, 15 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose Even if the planet doesn't exist it's detection is still notable enough as it attracted lots of media attention, plus a lot of detail about the planet will be lost if merged with Alpha centauri. 50.101.130.93 (talk) 21:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Oppose. The above anon is right. Even if b turns out to really be spurious, it is still notable enough for an article, which would then fall in the same category as Vulcan (hypothetical planet) and Neith (hypothetical moon). --JorisvS (talk) 22:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.