“Some science writers really jumped on that, of course, and thought excitedly, ‘ Ah! Liquid water,” and here it gasps “within the habitable zone, therefore, LIFE! ‘
Senior Fellow Guillermo Gonzalez, astronomer and Discovery Institute, says about recent media reports of yet another alien “Earth-like” planet, this one romantically named K2-18b, orbiting from us a red dwarf star 124 light years.
Headline of the sample, “It’s got water and the right temperature: Planet found that could support life.”
Rain can spatter K2-18b’s surface “if it has a solid surface, which seems doubtful”. “That’s everything you need!” Jay Richards, who co-authored Gonzalez’s Privileged Planet, exclaims.
The two have fun on a new episode of ID the Future with the science news. Dr. Gonzalez says, despite the hype, “This is definitely not a habitable planet.”
But here’s a bigger point, as Jay Richards continues to say. Wouldn’t it be helpful if science journalists routinely did more than embellish on press releases from scientists and actually checked in with critics and skeptics about stories like this? “Teach the controversy,” perhaps, as some might have it.
Dr. Richards states, that’s “not only the way journalism should be done but the way science should be done.”
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