Comment Re:Skeptical... (Score 1) 132
1) The slashdot title, and a line in the New Scientist article are misleading. This does not cast doubt on SNe Ia as standard candles. It is an odd supernova, but we think we can screen these out -- we just have to be careful.
2) That email refers to observations in the B filter, which are used for cosmology. Indeed there is not enough data from that g filter (which transforms to B) near peak to constrain this supernova, so it was thrown out from the cosmology partially because the B peak magnitude is a complete extrapolation. For the Nature paper we used observations in the V filter, (transformed from the r filter) which is actually measured near peak. All of this is covered in the Nature paper. Also, when that email was written, not all of the data had been reduced. Be careful in taking emails out of context -- it is easy to get the wrong idea.
2) That email refers to observations in the B filter, which are used for cosmology. Indeed there is not enough data from that g filter (which transforms to B) near peak to constrain this supernova, so it was thrown out from the cosmology partially because the B peak magnitude is a complete extrapolation. For the Nature paper we used observations in the V filter, (transformed from the r filter) which is actually measured near peak. All of this is covered in the Nature paper. Also, when that email was written, not all of the data had been reduced. Be careful in taking emails out of context -- it is easy to get the wrong idea.
