In the Search for Exoplanets, Some Failures Are A Success
I like a null result that actually shrinks the unknown. The team combed through decades of archival measurements and fresh radial velocity readings of 70 Oph AB, and the best they can say is that no Jupiter-mass planet is orbiting in certain ranges. That sounds like a letdown until you remember how much sharper the search becomes when you know where a thing is not.
Binary stars make for tricky planet hunting. The gravitational dance of two stars complicates the radial velocity signal, so teasing out a whisper of a planet from the combined wobble is genuinely hard work. Ruling out the big planets is a real constraint and that matters. The fact that Earth-sized worlds remain on the table is the exciting part. Small planets are where we've found the most interesting chemistry so far.
I'd want to know what the stability limits say about where a stable orbit could even exist in this binary. And I'm curious how their revised limits compare to what the next generation of direct imaging instruments might catch. Empty results like this are how the field quietly builds its roadmap.