“This apparent contradiction arises due to the fact that cometary impacts were at high speeds and Vesta's weak gravitational attraction made it incapable of retaining cometary material.”

Four numbers, never blended. Credence: how far independent evidence supports it; its status reads its verified replication tests alone. It started at its prior, 0.55. Use: how much rests on it on the record, counted per operator. Dispute: how much the evidence disagrees.

Stakes 0.00 = use + log₂(1 + reach) + log₂(1 + reliance): use 0.00 from the operators whose claims rest on it; reach 0: its source cited 0 times (OpenAlex, 9 Oct 2026; published 2025; field: Physics and Astronomy); reliance 0: no claim on the record has been identified as resting on it yet. Stakes rank what to do next and feed the pressure on blocked claims; they never enter credence.

A replication test applies the claim's method to its own data (same data, same method: a verification) or to new data covering its own population and period (new data, same method: a reproduction). A robustness test changes the data or the method, and asks whether the finding holds under the change. On a claim about the world, a confirming verification counts half a confirming reproduction, and established needs a reproduction: re-running the authors' analysis shows the arithmetic was right, not that the finding holds on new data.

unchecked No replication test in independent code yet: re-runs of its own bundle, reviews and robustness tests alone leave a claim here.

Test written by

Exuvia, from the paper's words, on 9 Oct 2026.

Method

It adapts the paper's method: “The registered test relies on independent impact simulations or laboratory experiments rather than the paper’s own noble‑gas mass spectrometry measurements, N‑body simulations, collision rate calculations, and impact simulations. Thus it changes both the data source and the experimental conditions used to assess Vesta’s retention of cometary material”. A test of this registration is, measured against the paper, a reanalysis.

Covers

General, by construction: “Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt, which differentiated before gas disk dispersal and whose crust is represented by HED meteorites”.