Super-Saturn isn’t real, it can’t hurt you.

October 20, 2024 4:51 AM

Why did everyone fall for the J1407b myth? is 12 minute video essay that starts off as discussion about a cool astronomical mystery but becomes a measured, well-argued rant about knowledge in the age of Google and LLMs. It is by YouTuber Kyplanet who makes weekly videos about cool astronomical things, mostly exoplanets.
posted by Kattullus (9 comments total)

That's a really, really good statement of the problem, I wish there was a text version of it.

The criticism of NASA's website was interesting--that's the segment that was new to me.
posted by gimonca at 5:33 AM on October 20 [1 favorite]

That was 12 minutes of eye opening righteous anger. Mind opening, too. I cannot believe the damage I am seeing on Facebook by people using AI programs like CHATGPT to make cute impossible pictures of lion families in snow or catellya orchids with labelliums in the shape of voluptuous young naked women that get the most lurid Awww type heart emojis. And people get incensed if anyone points out otherwise. If they see them. Such remarks never make the Most Relevant setting. It is such a shameful way to make money. And now I come to find it is poisoning science, too. Thank you for this, Katullus.
posted by y2karl at 6:00 AM on October 20 [1 favorite]

whatever j1407b was, it wasn’t a planet & didn’t orbit that star. to make a long story short, the consensus among the astronomy community at this point is either that j1407b is either a rogue brown dwarf in the protoplanetary disc and has a mass of around 20 times bigger than Jupiter or it could be much smaller and only 6 Jupiter masses which would make it a rogue planet. but again it doesn’t have rings, instead having a protoplanetary disc

or, maybe, aliens? 🛸
posted by HearHere at 6:09 AM on October 20 [1 favorite]

Wikipedia gets it right, but a number of other sources, including NASA, get it wrong.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:59 AM on October 20

Jaysus, Ky, would you slow down already? and enunciate your consonants.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:29 AM on October 20

If a major vector for this disinfo is text, harvested and amplified by search engines and LLMs, is it reasonable to guess that corrective text would be more help than video?

Also, Wikipedia suggests J1407b does have rings, and explains how the observations support the idea. So who is a layman to trust?
posted by Western Infidels at 8:37 AM on October 20

or, maybe, aliens? 🛸

Aliens that have built a Dyson sphere!
posted by TedW at 8:46 AM on October 20

If only scientists would settle down with their opinions.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:48 AM on October 20

I've long been an advocate of flagging bullshit videos on Youtube that come up on your feed without mercy. If for no other reason that it really cleans up your personal feed. So far, it's really easy, too because I've found crap videos are often really easy to pick out from the title, the thumbnail and even the name of the channel.

I occasionally hit Youtube on my work computer, which never gets signed in. The generic algorithm casts a pretty wide net, except for the proliferation of shorts that feature young women with really bouncy boobs.

NASA, otoh, has no excuse.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:12 AM on October 20 [1 favorite]