Category Mixing?

There may be some confusion to readers here. Under "exoplanet candidates" we have listed things like 1RXJ 1609 b which are real objects the natures of which are being debated in the literature and 'hypothetical' planets like one around HD 141569. I would think that 'candidate' implies we have found a 'thing' the nature of which could be 'planet' or 'something else', whereas 'hypothetical planet' implies that an object may or may not exist.2632cgn (talk) 01:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

By all means, reorganise as necessary, but using the term hypothetical does not properly describe exoplanet candidates. Not to mention, I'm concerned it will make readers think of something that doesn't actually exist, simply theorised. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:12, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this subject is a bit of a minefield and the entry right now is a bit of an umbrella category for four different kinds of situations.

For example, the community is now definitely putting GJ 758 B in the brown dwarf category due to its age (a revised mass of ~ 40 Mj). There's some argument about 1RXJ 1609 B. The discovery paper pegs it at ~ 8 Mj or so, well below the deuterium-burning limit. But that was based in part on the age for Upper Scorpius from Preibisch et al. (2002). The revised age from Pecaut et al (2012) would imply something more like 14 Mj, above the deuterium-burning limit. While the momentum is in favor of this older age, the community opinion is not unanimous yet, I think. Even if it's below 13 Mj, my guess is that the majority of researchers would still put it as a "brown dwarf" given its companion-to-primary mass ratio and its projected separation from the star. HD 106906 b is like this. Then there are companions people 'claim' (usually in the RV field) exist but others dispute whether or not they exist. Some of the companions to GJ 581 fall into this category. Then finally there are the objects "inferred to exist" from other observations of a system but for which there are specific claims. The putative HD 141569 Ab falls into this category.

As you can guess, this situation is a complete mess within the community, and the lack of set 'orthodoxy' is indicative of a very new field.

Really, what we need are separate categories for each situation, but that's very time consuming and the criteria best used is not clearly established within the research literature. So for now, probably the best thing to do is have a note explaining exactly the kinds of things you are including under "Exoplanet candidates". - 2632cgn (talk) 02:39, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You know much more about this than I do, so any suggestions you have would be welcome. My thoughts are this, though: for simplicity's sake, I think it would be okay to throw most objects into this category so long as there's either no known information about the object or it cannot be obviously classified otherwise (such as the case with the likely brown dwarf objects). After all, this category is for "candidates", which is a pretty broad statement. Regarding HD 106906 b, while I can see the possibility of it being termed a brown dwarf at some point, I think it would be original research to do so at this time. — Huntster (t @ c) 04:02, 24 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]