Here They Go Again...

Looks like the needy, attentioned-starved astronomer community -- (see this prior post) -- is at it again. Today, some of them made a *gasp* wild claim that "that they had seen the glow of alien planets for the first time ."

Stop the presses. "Two different teams studying two different planets were able to distinguish the planets' infrared radiation - or heat glow - from the overwhelming glare of their parent stars." This is a critically important study because these -- uninhabitable -- planets are pretty far away. So, scientists had not been able to detect the planet's infrared radation. Now, they can. Which is remarkable, because the infared radiation coming off far away planets directly affects the tides. Right? The Seasons? Weather?

Just when the yawn starts to set in, and you feel like patting the astronomers on their heads and say, "That's nice, champ," they cry "wolf." Which for astronomers means that this new discovery could somehow, someway possibly maybe give us some insight into whether life may exist on other planets. These astronomers claim that this new discovery is significant because it may open the door to learning more about the composition of "exoplanets" and whether they can sustain life. Where, presumably, this alien life is monitoring the events of "American Idol" on on intergalactic satellite system. "You see," our astronomer friends will say," They are just like us. Except for the fact that they breathe methane." Moreover, what if the gelatinous blobs of planet TrES-1 just want to be left the fuck alone.

The story further notes, "'We've been hunting for this light for almost 10 years, ever since extrasolar planets were first discovered,' said Dr. David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, adding that he was ecstatic when he first saw the data." It is worth noting that Dr. Charbonneau won the "Most Easily Excitable Man of the Year" award in 1993 and again in 2000.

Not to be outdone on the hyperbole front, "Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, a planet hunter at the University of California in Berkeley, called the results 'the stuff of history books.'" History books written by lonely planet hunters that no one will read. It will be right up their with "An Oral History of my Crappy Vacuum Cleaner," which I'll be performing this weekend when I return the damn thing to Sears.

Realizing the futility of their "science," astonomers are trying mergers and acquisitions as a way of gaining credibility for their voodoo nonsense. "Dr. Alan Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., noted that it had been only 10 years since the first so-called exoplanets had been discovered. 'This discovery,' he wrote in an e-mail message, 'also shows that we are well along the way to combining astronomy and biology into the new science of astrobiology, with the ultimate goal being to search for life beyond Earth.'" This dangerous pronouncement will no doubt spark worldwide biologist riots, who will be out to punish the blasphemous astronomers.