jeudi 30 juin 2016

Asteroid diameters: scientific controversy?

I couldn't see that this topic has already been covered here, so I started this new thread. If it's already a topic, could a mod please merge it with the appropriate thread? Thanks.

Nathan Myhrvold is pretty well-known, I hope.

A month or so ago there was a bit of a flap over what he wrote, concerning a paper he's submitted to Icarus (preprint is on arXiv, arXiv:1605.06490; link is to the abstract); here's how he characterizes the flap.

It - the controversy - is discussed in quite a few places; I'd recommend Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong blog post on it, Killer Asteroids (when you read the comments you may guess why I favor this site! ;)).

Anyway, this appeared on arXiv today (arXiv:1606.08923): "NEOWISE Reactivation Mission Year Two: Asteroid Diameters and Albedos". The abstract is worth copying in full:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nugent et al.
The Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission continues to detect, track, and characterize minor planets. We present diameters and albedos calculated from observations taken during the second year since the spacecraft was reactivated in late 2013. These include 207 near-Earth asteroids and 8,885 other asteroids. 84% of the near-Earth asteroids did not have previously measured diameters and albedos by the NEOWISE mission. Comparison of sizes and albedos calculated from NEOWISE measurements with those measured by occultations, spacecraft, and radar-derived shapes shows accuracy consistent with previous NEOWISE publications. Diameters and albedos fall within ±∼20% and ±∼40%, 1-sigma, respectively, of those measured by these alternate techniques. NEOWISE continues to preferentially discover near-Earth objects which are large (>100 m), and have low albedos.

"Comments: Accepted to AJ"

The status of Myhrvold's paper? Apparently not yet accepted for publication (I have no way to tell, for sure).

Worthy of a discussion here, I think.

In particular, what's your take on what Myhrvold identifies as "the problem"?

And which of his three suggested explanations - "Colossal error", "Fraud", or "Something else" - do you think holds the most water (and why)?


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/292ZkCq

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