New Planet Isn’t There, Expert Says

For those keeping score on the search for new planets outside our solar system, scratch the one discovered last July; keep the two announced last week.

Andrew Lyne of the University of Manchester’s Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories in Jodrell Bank, England, told the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta on Wednesday that the discovery he announced last July has turned out to be incorrect.

“The planet just evaporated,” he said, because changes in signals from a distant pulsar--which he and some colleagues thought were caused by a planet revolving around the star--turned out to have been caused by the Earth revolving around the sun, not a planet around the pulsar.

“Our embarrassment is unbounded and I’m very sorry,” Lyne told astronomers from around the world who are attending the meeting.

However, Alexander Wolszczan, the astronomer who announced last week that he and his colleagues had discovered two planets revolving around another pulsar, said he is still confident that he has, indeed, found the first planets outside our solar system. Other experts who have examined Wolszczan’s data hailed it as the best evidence yet of other planets.

Wolszczan said Lyne’s misfortune “does not change my thinking about what I have found,” but it appears that the basic question--Are we alone?--is still up for grabs.