It would appear that the journos (& NASA) may be the cause of any confusion on this one.
The original paper by Stevenson etal was received by 'Nature' on 18 Nov 2009, accepted on the 5th March, and then published in Nature on April 22, 2010.
The first article about this appeared (in Physorg) on April 21, 2010 (source material provided by NASA/JPL/Spitzer).
The rebuttal paper was then published arXiv on 28th July, 2010.
Then Physorg again republished the original Stevenson article on Sept 14 and it doesn't seem to include any more info/detail. The Sept 14 article was sourced from Science@NASA (Dr. Tony Phillips and Dauna Coulter). This is the one which kicked off this thread.
Apart from the confusing multiple articles (being superseded, as well), the content
is interesting, none-the-less.
From the rebuttal paper Beaulieu etal:
Quote:
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This collection of data strongly suggests that methane is the dominant species in such an atmosphere. An opposing scenario was proposedby Stevenson et al. (2010), when they interpreted secondary transit data recorded with Spitzer at multiple wavelengths. We have shown here, though, that a methane- rich atmosphere and the presence of a stratosphere could produce a similar effect: spectroscopic data are necessary to test this hypothesis.
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In my own defence, I did say after reading the original Stevenson paper: "They're obviously pretty confident of their lightcurve readings, in the first place. This is still a fairly new measurement technique. They only have a total of six observations to go on at the moment, also."
Beaulieu et al are now saying they need good 'ol spectroscopic readings.
Good fun. Apologies for the confusion but 'twas worthwhile going 'round the loop. Thanks for the 'heads-up' on the Beaulieu paper, Carl.
Interesting.
Cheers