Talk:70 Virginis

Discussion
Found this on the main page here:
 * Nice artist's conception [here|http://business.fortunecity.com/soros/98/70vir.html]
 * Unfortunately, all of the "Goldilocks" reports are based on
 * old data... If you read the 1996 paper by Geoff Marcy you
 * will find him using a parallax of ".112 (29 light years) &
 * a spectral type of G4V. This is where the often quoted
 * surface temperature of 80 degrees Celsius is derived. However,
 * that star is now known to be much farther away, & a subgiant.
 * [Hipparchos|http://astro.estec.esa.nl/Hipparcos/HIPcatalogueSearch.html] gives its
 * parallax as ".05522 (59 light years), which makes the
 * new planet far too hot to ever have liquid water, unless under
 * an atmosphere near the critical point of water.


 * Too bad for science fiction!

This isn't an encyclopedia article...I'm not sure what it is. Will we even want an article titled "70 Virginis"? --LMS


 * Yes, we probably will. It's an important player in the recent field of extrasolar planetary astronomy, which is what the entry above is actually kind of about. Tho' I agree it couldn't be phrased any worse this side of being done in mime. -- Paul Drye

Argh--wiki snobs!. Look, this information needs to be placed somewhere, because there are now hundreds of wrong pages that disregard it. I don't care if you want to rephrase it in fucking Lojban, just don't remove something that is needed out of personal prejudices of style! --graywyvern


 * Merry Christmas to you too. --Paul Drye
 * Personal preferenes of style? --MichaelTinkler

I removed it because it doesn't make sense to anyone who doesn't already know a fair bit about the subject (apparently). Why should Wikipedia tolerate nonsense? If you would like to rewrite it in a coherent paragraph or several, beginning with an explanation of what "70 Virginis" is, that would be grand. --LMS


 * I'll have a go when I get home to my books, Larry. I've been doing a lot of the other science-heavy star articles already, and I can puzzle out what pottymouth is trying to say. -- Paul Drye

Which puts me in mind of a book Asimov wrote on ALPHA CENTAURI. Now, at that time what was known about that star would not have filled an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of note paper, so he managed to fill the book with elementary explanations of, basically, everything an uneducated person might have needed to know in order to understand what the meager data we had on this star might MEAN. Now, it seems to me that anyone who gets as far as "70 Virginis" in a wiki is going to know that this is a stellar designation, & if someone else wants to put double brackets around such jargon as "parallax" that might not be in a tiny dictionary, that's one thing. And if you want to add stuff you know besides this, that's even better. But i added to the Wikipedia once before & my article did not last three days & why must people who have nothing better to do than compulsively check into "Recent Changes" & meddle with other people's work, have to remove what i wrote after not one hour has passed, is beyond me.

I will not contribute again.

Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia. We do not own our entries. See most common Wikipedia faux pas. --LMS


 * Now, it seems to me that anyone who gets as far as "70 Virginis" in a wiki is going to know that this is a stellar designation,
 * Hmmmm. I'm a medievalist, and I had no clue.  Wikipedia is not only for the astronomically aware;  when I clicked on [70 Virginis] I was kind of expecting something along the lines of St. Ursula and the 10K virgins.  I'd say that after hitting the save button the first time, you should have then hit [edit this page right now!] and started making your contributions into sentences.  For instance, what is "70 Virginis"?  What does Goldilocks and the Three Bears have to do or not have to do with the matter?  I don't think we were overly picky.  I myself didn't edit a thing - I read it and wondered what in the hell it meant;  I trusted that someone who both knew and cared would come along sooner or later. That's how Wikipedia works.  --MichaelTinkler

It is either a star or a planet but it can't be both. New paragraph is confused but I don't know what it is supposed to mean to correct it. --rmhermen

Maybe it's what it says it is: a star with a planet. Joao

Coming in a bit late, let me ask, was the planet #3 on the extrasolar list? Trekphiler 06:39, 29 December 2005 (UTC)