Summary
John Husted's testimony at the First Energy corruption trial reveals significant ties between the Ohio politician and the energy company. Husted, who received a secret million-dollar payment from First Energy for his campaign, subsequently aided the company in securing a billion-dollar bailout, leading to a 62% increase in electric bills for consumers. His appearance in court was characterized as a defense of First Energy, following the exposure of the company's executives in a corruption scandal.
In a separate discussion, astronomers Casey Brinkman and Nicholas Cowan conduct a thorough audit of the so-called "mega-Earths," planets with masses exceeding ten times that of Earth. Their research suggests that many of these planets may not exist as previously thought. By analyzing the data from the radial velocity method, they identify that the stars hosting these planets are highly active, which can distort mass measurements due to stellar noise. Their findings indicate that the inflated mass estimates of these mega-Earths are likely artifacts of measurement errors rather than actual celestial bodies, raising questions about the reliability of current astronomical data.
Show Notes
Are mega-Earths, massive rocky planets without thick gas envelopes, actually real?
A new study suggests that stellar activity may be making some planets appear far heavier than they are. By analyzing 333 planets, researchers found that eight unusually dense worlds orbit magnetically active stars, raising questions about how reliably astronomers measure planetary masses. Could some of the universe’s strangest planets be measurement illusions?
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