Another Planet Like Earth?

Started by ShinjisLover April 21st, 2009 2:01 PM
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ShinjisLover

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Posted July 5th, 2010
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Spoiler:

HATFIELD, England – In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.


"The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,'" said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.


An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet "extraordinary."
Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of Earth — while previous planets found outside our solar system are closer to the size of massive Jupiter, which NASA says could swallow more than 1,000 Earths.


Gliese 581 e sits close to the nearest star, making it too hot to support life. Still, Mayor said its discovery in a solar system 20 1/2 light years away from Earth is a "good example that we are progressing in the detection of Earth-like planets."
Scientists also discovered that the orbit of planet Gliese 581 d, which was found in 2007, was located within the "habitable zone" — a region around a sun-like star that would allow water to be liquid on the planet's surface, Mayor said.
He spoke at a news conference Tuesday at the University of Hertfordshire during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.


Gliese 581 d is probably too large to be made only of rocky material, fellow astronomer and team member Stephane Udry said, adding it was possible the planet had a "large and deep" ocean.


"It is the first serious 'water-world' candidate," Udry said.


Mayor's main planet-hunting competitor, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, praised the find of Gliese 581 e as "the most exciting discovery" so far of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system.
"This discovery is absolutely extraordinary," Marcy told The Associated Press by e-mail, calling the discoveries a significant step in the search for Earth-like planets.


While Gliese 581 e is too hot for life "it shows that nature makes such small planets, probably in large numbers," Marcy commented. "Surely the galaxy contains tens of billions of planets like the small, Earth-mass one announced here."


Nearly 350 planets have been found outside our solar system, but so far nearly every one of them was found to be extremely unlikely to harbor life.
Most were too close or too far from their sun, making them too hot or too cold for life. Others were too big and likely to be uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter. Those that are too small are highly difficult to detect in the first place.
Both Gliese 581 d and Gliese 581 e are located in constellation Libra and orbit around Gliese 581.


Like other planets circling that star — scientists have discovered four so far — Gliese 581 e was found using the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile.


The telescope has a special instrument which splits light to find wobbles in different wavelengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

"It is great work and shows the potential of this detection method," said Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.



For the original article.


All I really know what to say is: Interesting, I hope they look into this more.

Corvus of the Black Night

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They should just make you Newsbot =D

All joking aside, this is pretty interesting. I never really understood why finding life elsewhere was all that special, but it's interesting to see how far we've come in the technology. (hell, we could probably make certain planets hospitable with the right technology)

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Its great and all, but any astronauts going there would have to be around twenty when they set off to reach there in time and they'd spend their entire lives on an intergalactic road trip. That would be HELL. That's assuming that we can create a space vessel that can get near to the speed of light, of course.

BHwolfgang

kamikorosu

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Good. Now, let's try to find a faster way there. Gliese 581 is somewhat 20 1/2 light years from here, right? Well, how long would our most advanced and modern spacecraft take to get there?

It's great that we're closer to finding a habitable planet, but let's not make any conclusions.

Azonic

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Can't say I'm surprised at all. The universe has no boundaries yet, so I'm not surprised that at least one of the other planets may have life on there.

I've heard that a chemical required for life to exist has been detected somewhere in the Andromeda, but I can't be bothered to find the source of the info.
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The day that we can actually send test vessels to these planets will be the day I'm impressed.
Why would we? It already said the newly discovered planet was so close to a star that it was too hot for human life. Unless you're talking about machines, not humans, then yeah, that'd be awesome.

Great find. Shows that tourism in space may not just end up being trips to the moon, huh?
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Hmm... I swore I read an article exactly like this months ago before that particle accelerator experiment.

Nothing has really changed. We will keep looking for Earth-like planets, but we will fail to come up with the means to transport the entire population of Earth there. Even if we only colonize there, the same thing will happen like what happened between America and Britain, lol.

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*Raises hand*
How on earth are we going to get around 90 billion
Spoiler:
i said Around I'm not sure how many there really are maybe i should Google it later
people and pets to this new planet?
O_o
But really i think it's quite cool they found this planet :D

twocows

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And, as it turns out, the first thing any of its inhabitants will hear from us is spam.

Also, there's some speculation that "d" doesn't have a rocky interior, which would rule it out completely, I believe.

*Raises hand*
How on earth are we going to get around 90 billion
Spoiler:
i said Around I'm not sure how many there really are maybe i should Google it later
people and pets to this new planet?
O_o
But really i think it's quite cool they found this planet :D
Approximately 6 billion people.
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Heh...sirboulevard actually sent me an article about this. XD

I'm just happy that science is moving forward. :3

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s0nido

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I've heard of this story. I don't see why it couldn't be a place for us to go to. But if it is inhabitable for humans, there's a possibility that intelligent life could already exist on the planet. And anyway, it's way too far for us to get there any time soon.
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Another super-Earth discovery? Cool, but whatever. Now let's just find the one that has the same enviroment as Earth.

Also, humans can live on Neptune. It's just that our houses will blow away with the 1000+ winds there and we'll drown in the water. Oh, and who knows if there are sea creatures on Neptune?