Exoplanetas – os erros jornalísticos

Desta vez não vou falar dos erros na TV portuguesa, nem sequer em especial da TVI.
Também não vou falar do erro jornalístico que levou ao mito de Roswell.
Vou falar de um erro jornalístico… na ciência.

Há uns dias atrás, coloquei neste post, a palestra no TED do astrónomo Dimitar Sasselov, de Harvard, que nos falou, entre outras coisas, dos resultados da sonda Kepler.

Aos 8:20, ele mostra a imagem de cima em powerpoint, diz que é um resultado estatístico (MUITO IMPORTANTE), diz que são candidatos (MUITO IMPORTANTE), e aos 8:46 mostra a outra imagem de cima em powerpoint, dizendo que há 700 candidatos a exoplanetas e que nos próximos anos os iremos detectar/confirmar. Diz também que 140 destes serão mais ou menos do tamanho da Terra.
Aos 9:29 mostra outra imagem de powerpoint em que diz que haverá 100 milhões de planetas habitáveis, e que nos próximos anos poderemos descobrir 60.

Nas palavras dele:
“What the new telescope Kepler has been able to tell us in the past few weeks – and lo and behold – we are back to the harmony and to fulfilling the dreams of Copernicus. You can see here [Chart] – small planets dominate the picture. The planets which are marked “like Earth” – definitely more than any of the other planets that we see. Now for the first time we can say that. There is a lot more work we need to do with this. Most of these are candidates and in the next few years – we will confirm them – but the statistical result is loud and clear – and the statistical result is that planets like our own Earth are out there. [Chart] Our Milky Way galaxy is rich in this kind of planet. So the question is what do we do next? Well we can study them now. We know where they are. And we can find those that we call “habitable” meaning that they have similar conditions to what experience here on Earth and where a lot of complex chemistry can happen …”

Ou seja, NÃO se descobriu, mas espera-se descobrir e confirmar vários desses planetas nos próximos anos.
É fenomenal haver tantos candidatos!
Muitos deles serão certamente planetas!
E vários deles serão do tamanho da Terra!
Fantástico!!!
Mas isto já tinha sido anunciado em Junho! Leiam este nosso post.
E ninguém está a dizer que já estão confirmados, que são como a Terra, que têm terra e água, ou disparates do género! Isso foram invenções jornalísticas!

Os jornalistas da FOX perceberam algumas coisas mal:
“Scientists celebrated Sunday after finding more than 700 suspected new planets – including up to 140 similar in size to Earth – in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory.”
Os jornalistas do Daily Mail perceberam ainda mais coisas mal e publicaram um artigo a dizer que a NASA admitiu que a missão Kepler tinha descoberto 140 planetas como a Terra!
“Hundreds of new planets have been discovered by Nasa’s new space probe, sparking new hope of life outside our solar system. Up to 140 of the newly-found planets are similar in size to Earth, scientists have said. The Kepler probe – which constantly monitors more than 150,000 stars for tell-tale signs of planets orbiting them – also may have found five new solar systems, Nasa said.”
Muitos outros jornalistas, que leram este artigo, foram na mesma levados!
Por exemplo, no jornal Sun de Toronto, escreveram:
“NASA’s deep-space Kepler probe has found hundreds of new planets — many similar to earth — sparking new hope of life outside our solar system. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration confirmed Sunday that in six weeks of operation, the spacecraft has found five new solar systems in the Milky Way and identified more than 700 bodies that could be new planets. NASA has so far formally announced only five new exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — but early data analysis indicates up to 140 of the 700 identified bodies are earth-like. That is, they are solid masses containing both land and water which could allow simple lifeforms to develop.”
Este até fala de planetas com terra e água! Enfim…
Até o Daily Galaxy caiu nesta conversa…

Claro que há gente atenta a estes erros jornalísticos.
Leiam por exemplo o site NASA Watch, aqui, aqui, e aqui.
O problema é que isto veio a seguir a outra polémica com a equipa do Kepler…

Space.com:
“Claims of 100 Earth-Like Planets Not True.
“What Dimitar presented was ‘candidates,'” said David Koch, the mission’s deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “These have the apparent signature we are looking for, but then we must perform extensive follow-up observations to eliminate false positives, such as background eclipsing binaries. This requires substantial amounts of ground-based observing which is done primarily in the summer observing season.””

Universe Today:
“Did Kepler Scientist Leak Data? Um, Not Really.
Mainstream media (MSM) is funny. Well, maybe funny isn’t the right word, especially when they hose things up and create a story when there really isn’t one. Or when they miss the real story. MSM recently succeeded in spades on both accounts in regards to the Kepler mission. Just last month, the Kepler team announced they had found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and 706 of these candidates potentially are planets from as small as Earth to around the size of Jupiter, with the majority having radii less than half that of Jupiter. This is such incredible news, especially when you factor in that the data was from just 43 days of observations! But MSM seemed to miss all this and instead focused on the fact that the Kepler team got approval from NASA to keep over half of their data for an additional six months to verify and confirm their findings, rather than releasing all of it, as per NASA’s standard policy which requires astronomers to release their data from publicly funded instruments in one year. Then over this past weekend, from a TED talk by Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov, MSM finally realized that Kepler has found a boat-load of potential Earth-sized exoplanets. Well, yes. That’s what they said in June.
But then MSM took things out of context and exaggerated just a tad.
Even though in his talk, Sasselov used the words “potential” and “candidates” and said the planets are “like Earth, that is, having a radius smaller than twice Earth’s radius,” MSM reported news that NASA has found rocky planets with land and water.”

Ontem, o próprio Dimitar Sasselov resolveu clarificar tudo neste post do blog da NASA:
“At this time we have found only planet candidates … Planet candidates are just that: ‘candidates’.”

Como diz este artigo, é preciso um Carl Sagan que saiba falar para o público…