Carnival of Space #54

The most exciting space-related web link I've seen this week wasn't at the carnival site:

There may be a hint of a planet around Alpha Centauri B here: http://oklo.org/?p=279 (Or perhaps the puzzle hasn't been correctly decoded yet.)

See the comments section of http://www.oklo.org/?p=269 for an explanation of why the speculation is focusing on Alpha Centauri.

Hm, I need to check Greg's site more often, he clearly has heard more news than I.

There's been a whisper for a few weeks of an imminent "goldilocks" planet - inference is that it is a super earth square in a habitable zone and that there is radial velocity confirmation.
Not clear if it was found by transit or not.

Greg's anagram seems to contain "Super Earth" and "Alpha Centauri B"
Alpha Cen B is a target for a Chilean telescope, Deb Fischer is leading that effort, they are really banging away on it, hoping to get limits down to one earth mass. If there is a super earth there, they might be seeing it already in the data.

Can't tell which he is hinting at, or is it both?
I don't want to scoop this, I am hesitant to post anything on it.

Thanks for the confirmation of the whisper!

In the comments section of http://www.oklo.org/?p=269, Greg commented that Debra Fischer's Alpha Centauri project was scheduled to start observing runs on May 19th. Do you know if she (or anyone else) has an Alpha Centauri exoplanet project that started earlier?

(I'm surprised that astronomers (and scientists in general) haven't figured out a system which protects discoverers but allows the sharing of preliminary information. As a layperson, I still don't really understand the issues involved, particularly for tenured professors. If you ever feel like doing a post on why there are rumors and secrets instead of open (but safe for the discoverer) communication about preliminary results, I would be very interested to read it!)