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General discussion (archive)Habitable exoplanet found?(156 posts)(156 posts)
(156 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 17, 2011
It seems like every few weeks a group of scientists are announcing the discovery of new exoplanets, but none of them are willing or able to declare them habitable... until now. French scientists studying Gliese 581d, a planet orbiting a red dwarf star about 20 light-years away from us, have declared that the planet exists in what is known as the "Goldilocks zone", a distance from its star that allows the planet to remain warm enough to have liquid water on its surface (not too hot, not too cold, just right). The planet is around 6 or 7 times the Earth's mass and twice its size, so its gravity is higher than Earth's (a little more than twice Earth's gravity), may be tidally locked (one side of the planet always faces its star) and it very likely has a carbon dioxide based atmosphere, so it is not exactly a vacation spot, but could easily support microbial and even complex plant life. With our current technology, it would take nearly 300,000 years to reach the planet, so we won't be visiting it anytime soon, but we can send probes there for future generation to see what's what.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4321/first-habitable-exoplanet-confirmed
Posted May 17, 2011
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cogadh: It seems like every few weeks a group of scientists are announcing the discovery of new exoplanets, but none of them are willing or able to declare them habitable... until now. French scientists studying Gliese 581d, a planet orbiting a red dwarf star about 20 light-years away from us, have declared that the planet exists in what is known as the "Goldilocks zone", a distance from its star that allows the planet to remain warm enough to have liquid water on its surface (not too hot, not too cold, just right). The planet is around 6 or 7 times the Earth's mass and twice its size, so its gravity is higher than Earth's (a little more than twice Earth's gravity), may be tidally locked (one side of the planet always faces its star) and it very likely has a carbon dioxide based atmosphere, so it is not exactly a vacation spot, but could easily support microbial and even complex plant life. With our current technology, it would take nearly 300,000 years to reach the planet, so we won't be visiting it anytime soon, but we can send probes there for future generation to see what's what.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4321/first-habitable-exoplanet-confirmed
Progress
Posted May 17, 2011
And by the time the probe gets there we have been sending manned flights there for a while, due to better space ship engines being invented in the mean time.
Post edited May 17, 2011 by Miaghstir
Posted May 17, 2011
We only really know two facts about this planet. It possibly has liquid water. And a general idea of its mass.

I'm going to be skeptical as to those two details alone being confirmations of habitability.
Posted May 17, 2011
Where do I sign up?
Posted May 17, 2011
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Taleroth: We only really know two facts about this planet. It possibly has liquid water. And a general idea of its mass.

I'm going to be skeptical as to those two details alone being confirmations of habitability.
I don't care. We must send Simon Cowell there now to assess the situation once and for all. In fact, we'll need to put Ant and Dec in there too, Piers Morgan, and a portal through to the stage of <country>'s got Talent. We have to make sure.
Posted May 17, 2011
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Taleroth: We only really know two facts about this planet. It possibly has liquid water. And a general idea of its mass.

I'm going to be skeptical as to those two details alone being confirmations of habitability.
One of the mantras of the search for extra-terrestrial life is "follow the water". Everywhere we find liquid water, we find life, even in the most inhospitable of places. Acidic pools of boiling water in the Yellowstone caldera... full of bacteria; volcanic fumaroles on the ocean floor... covered in chemosynthetic plants; super cooled water under the Antarctic glaciers... tons of plankton. If there is liquid water on this "new" planet, and the odds of that are extremely high now, there will be some form of life there, even if it is only bacteria.
Posted May 17, 2011
Work on getting some light speed/FTL drives up first. :D
Posted May 17, 2011
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Taleroth: We only really know two facts about this planet. It possibly has liquid water. And a general idea of its mass.

I'm going to be skeptical as to those two details alone being confirmations of habitability.
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cogadh: One of the mantras of the search for extra-terrestrial life is "follow the water". Everywhere we find liquid water, we find life, even in the most inhospitable of places. Acidic pools of boiling water in the Yellowstone caldera... full of bacteria; volcanic fumaroles on the ocean floor... covered in chemosynthetic plants; super cooled water under the Antarctic glaciers... tons of plankton. If there is liquid water on this "new" planet, and the odds of that are extremely high now, there will be some form of life there, even if it is only bacteria.
There's a very big problem with that idea.

Life's ability to live somewhere is not the same as its ability to START somewhere.

All life in those inhospitable places on earth still has common ancestors with life everywhere else on earth. Which means that the life didn't start in those regions. They then evolved to live in that area. We've never found evidence that life started more than once on this planet.

So life's ability to live here is meaningless for other planets. It needs to start. Which those conditions are clearly something different.
Post edited May 17, 2011 by Taleroth
Posted May 17, 2011
Red star
twice the szie of Earth


Krypton?
Posted May 17, 2011
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Miaghstir: And by the time the probe gets there we have been sending manned flights there for a while, due to better space ship engines being invented in the mean time.
LoL yep. I've a story outline about a generation ship of puritan fanatics leaving a decadent galaxy in order to establish an idealist society on a faaaaar off planet of a nearby galaxy. Through the natural science of eugenics, and the passing of millennea, they slowly adapt their offspring to survive on the target planet by time of planetfall. When they arrive, technological advancement has seen their sacrosanct planet long since terraformed to earth standard. No longer a frontier planet, it has become a thriving hub of a new galactic civilization. Instead of rapture they find blasphemy. Now what!?
Posted May 17, 2011
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lukaszthegreat: Red star
twice the szie of Earth


Krypton?
Then it is more probable that an inhabitant of that planet will arrive here before we have the technology to travel there.
Post edited May 17, 2011 by OmegaX
Posted May 17, 2011
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cogadh: One of the mantras of the search for extra-terrestrial life is "follow the water".
Yep, and it's a huge fallacy.
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WhiteElk: Now what!?
Refuel.
Post edited May 17, 2011 by stonebro
Posted May 17, 2011
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cogadh: One of the mantras of the search for extra-terrestrial life is "follow the water".
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stonebro: Yep, and it's a huge fallacy.
Agreed! Where we use water, another could use ammonia.
Posted May 17, 2011
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stonebro: Yep, and it's a huge fallacy.
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WhiteElk: Agreed! Where we use water, another could use ammonia.
Life that lives below freezing? Is that still speculatively carbon based? What would elasticity be like at those temperatures?
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General discussion (archive)Habitable exoplanet found?(156 posts)(156 posts)
(156 posts)