Got the exoplanetary blues

That image

There has been a lot of news coverage in the last day or two of the discovery of a blue exoplanet - a planet orbiting another star. It is quite a feat to detect colour at this distance, but I feel that the news coverage is tainted by a combination of misapprehension and downright naughtiness.

To begin with, why should we care that the planet is blue (and hence splash it across the media)? After all, it has to be some colour. So what if it's blue? The only reason I can think for getting excited is that traditionally this colour has been associated with life. We know that Earth is primarily blue when seen from space because of its oceans and so link this with a friendly environment. What this misses is that Earth isn't the only planet in the solar system that is blue. Both Uranus and Neptune are blue too.

This blue coloration is not because these gas giants distant from the Sun are ideal for life. Quite the reverse. It is because that's the right sort of colour for a methane atmosphere. So we shouldn't get too excited, given two out of the three blue planets we know well aren't anywhere near inhabitable. In fact, to give the news media their due, they have all reported that HD 189733b, located around 63 light years away, is probably blue because of liquid or fragmentary silica in the atmosphere. And most have pointed out that it is a gas giant. But given that, it's not quite clear why they have got so excited about it. There is something worse, though.

Pretty well every bit of coverage I've seen has carried this stunning image from NASA/ESA. And why wouldn't they? It puts some of the pictures of planets in our own system to shame, let alone a planet 63 light years away. Of course, the reason it is so good is that it is an artist's impression. It's not a photograph. The colour detection has been through changes in the colour spectrum when the planet passes behind its star, not through direct observation, and certainly not through stunning photographs. And yet almost all the coverage I've seen has not mentioned that this picture is a fake.

Take, for instance, the write-up in the usually excellent i newspaper. They have given it a quarter page. Of that, maybe two thirds is the picture and the rest is a small text box. The closest it comes to saying the image isn't genuine is saying the planet is 'a deep cobalt blue, data gathered by the Hubble space telescope shows.' I'm sorry, I can guarantee you that a fair percentage of even the excellently educated readers of the i will come away convinced that they have seen a picture of this planet. It wouldn't be hard to put in an 'artist's impression' caption.

If you think I am being over concerned, it is because I think this demonstrates a widespread attitude in the media that you can loose and free with science reporting. Just imagine this was a story about a celebrity committing an offence and the paper mocked up a 'photograph' of it happening without labelling it as an artist's impression. It would cause on uproar. Just because this is science doesn't mean that such deception is acceptable.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

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