You may be able to get the scoop on the discovery of a planet near another star if you can unscramble this anagram:

Huge Applet, Unsearchable Terrestrials!

This anagram was posted by the astronomer Gregory Laughlin of the University of California at Santa Cruz. While Dr. Laughlin runs computer models to confirm his discovery, he’s apparently preserving priority for it by following a long and distinguished astronomical tradition, as Eric Hand explains in Nature,:

Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei embedded his discovery of Saturn and of the phases of Venus in anagrams; Dutch astronomer Christopher Huygens used the same trick to describe his recognition of Saturn’s rings (see ‘Planetary games’). The device enabled them to stake a claim to a discovery while they slogged through the months of tough observational work needed to confirm the initial idea. Only then would the solution be revealed.

Since posting the anagram last month, Dr. Laughlin has given several more clues: it contains a German name, and doesn’t contain the words “super” and “Earth.” You can read Dr. Laughlin’s original post here and check out some of the proposed solutions by his readers. (They’ve been suggesting that the German word might be a star named Gliese.) And then if you can solve the mystery, feel free to share it with the Lab.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/mystery-anagram-in-the-sky/

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About TierneyLab

John Tierney always wanted to be a scientist but went into journalism because its peer-review process was a great deal easier to sneak through. Now a columnist for the Science Times section, Tierney previously wrote columns for the Op-Ed page, the Metro section and the Times Magazine. Before that he covered science for magazines like Discover, Hippocrates and Science 86.

With your help, he's using TierneyLab to check out new research and rethink conventional wisdom about science and society. The Lab's work is guided by two founding principles:

  • 1. Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn't mean it's wrong.
  • 2. But that's a good working theory.

Comments and suggestions are welcome, particularly from researchers with new findings. E-mail tierneylab@nytimes.com.