Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet

[HuskyCaucasian]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/04/25/h...t.ap/index.html

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- European astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our solar system, and here's what it might be like to live there:

 

The "sun" wouldn't burn brightly. It would hang close, large and red in the sky, glowing faintly like a charcoal ember. And it probably would never set if you lived on the sunny side of the planet.

 

You could have a birthday party every 13 days because that's how fast this new planet circles its sun-like star. But watch the cake -- you'd weigh a whole lot more than you do on Earth.

 

You might be able to keep your current wardrobe. The temperature in this alien setting will likely be a lot like Earth's -- not too hot, not too cold.

 

And that "just right" temperature is one key reason astronomers think this planet could conceivably house life outside our solar system. It's also as close to Earth-sized as telescopes have ever spotted. Both elements make it the first potentially habitable planet besides Earth or Mars.

 

Astronomers who announced the discovery of the new planet Tuesday say this puts them closer to answering the cosmic question: Are we alone?

 

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the new body. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

 

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is learned about it. But as galaxies go, it's practically a neighbor. At only 120 trillion miles away, the red dwarf star that this planet circles is one of the 100 closest to Earth.

 

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

 

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

 

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wavelengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

 

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

 

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

 

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth, and gravity there would be 1.6 times as strong as Earth's. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 11/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

 

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

 

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

 

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

 

The new planet seems just right -- or at least that's what scientists think.

 

"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

 

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one -- simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves -- will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

 

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

 

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

 

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

 

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

 

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the mid-evening in the Northern Hemisphere.

 

Even so, Maran noted, "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime."

 

But, oh, the view, if you could. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

 

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

 

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

 

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

 

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

 

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

 

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

Ok, now how do we get there??

20.5 Lightyears is a LONG way. That's roughly 20 years at Warp 1, or over a week at Warp 8 (1,024 times the speed of light)... and Warp Drive doesn't exist!

[FlaSoxxJim]

This is exciting stuff and just too cool for words.

 

20 light years is practically a stone's throw from here.

 

ROAD TRIP!!

[DrunkBomber]

I saw them talking about this on the news. This is really interesting. I wonder how long until they send something out there to check it out.

[Balta1701]

I saw them talking about this on the news. This is really interesting. I wonder how long until they send something out there to check it out.

A long, long, long time.

[Flash Tizzle]

I saw them talking about this on the news. This is really interesting. I wonder how long until they send something out there to check it out.

I'm guessing it's going to be quite awhile before anyone thinks about that. We'll be lucky to reach anything even one light year from Earth, yet alone twenty.

 

There are probably billions of planets similar to Earth out in the solar system. Wake me when we find an Earth-like planet with Earth-like creatures roaming on it.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I saw them talking about this on the news. This is really interesting. I wonder how long until they send something out there to check it out.

They could send it tomorrow and none of us, nor our grandchildren, nor their grandchildren, nor THEIR grandchildren, ect would ever find out. As fo August of 2006, The Voyager 1 space craft is only .002 light years from the sun and It's been out in space for over 29 years!!! At that rate, it would take 297,250 years to reach this newly found planet.

[StrangeSox]

I saw them talking about this on the news. This is really interesting. I wonder how long until they send something out there to check it out.

 

If it's 20 light years away, it'd take millenia to get a spacecraft to the surface of the planet.

Edited April 25, 2007 by StrangeSox

[southsider2k5]

A long, long, long time.

 

Give or take a "long" or two...

[Flash Tizzle]

They could send it tomorrow and none of us, nor our grandchildren, nor their grandchildren, nor THEIR grandchildren, ect would ever find out. As fo August of 2006, The Voyager 1 space craft is only .002 light years from the sun and It's been out in space for over 29 years!!! At that rate, it would take 297,250 years to reach this newly found planet.

Hmm. We could update the old song from Zager and Evans.

 

In the year 299,257

If man is still alive

If woman can survive, they may find....

[Balance]

No word on whether there's a Starbuck's there yet....

[HuskyCaucasian]

No word on whether there's a Starbuck's there yet....

There is.

[BobDylan]

They could send it tomorrow and none of us, nor our grandchildren, nor their grandchildren, nor THEIR grandchildren, ect would ever find out. As fo August of 2006, The Voyager 1 space craft is only .002 light years from the sun and It's been out in space for over 29 years!!! At that rate, it would take 297,250 years to reach this newly found planet.

 

That's incredible. The size of the universe is mind boggling. Even if we ever figure out how to travel and the speed of light, things will still be out of our reach.

[StrangeSox]

That's incredible. The size of the universe is mind boggling. Even if we ever figure out how to travel and the speed of light, things will still be out of our reach.

 

Not sure if this has been posted on Soxtalk before

 

http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/...ale/index_f.htm

[Jake]

That's incredible. The size of the universe is mind boggling. Even if we ever figure out how to travel and the speed of light, things will still be out of our reach.

 

 

It is actually believed that traveling at the speed of light only benefits the traveler. When one travels near the speed of light (it is impossible to match it), you actually travel forward in time. For example, if you took a few minutes to ride at lightspeed around Central Park, your friends who saw you off would probably be dead when you came back. However, you would only be a few minutes older. I'm no expert, but physics is a really fascinating subject.

[StrangeSox]

It is actually believed that traveling at the speed of light only benefits the traveler. When one travels near the speed of light (it is impossible to match it), you actually travel forward in time. For example, if you took a few minutes to ride at lightspeed around Central Park, your friends who saw you off would probably be dead when you came back. However, you would only be a few minutes older. I'm no expert, but physics is a really fascinating subject.

 

That's a little exaggerated, but, yes, relativity does say that. It would take a lot longer than a few minutes for the person to be dead, though.

[Jake]

That's a little exaggerated, but, yes, relativity does say that. It would take a lot longer than a few minutes for the person to be dead, though.

 

I remember the example I heard was a young boy going on his lightspeed ride, and coming back to his little brother being an old man. Fascinating.

[StrangeSox]

I remember the example I heard was a young boy going on his lightspeed ride, and coming back to his little brother being an old man. Fascinating.

 

That sounds more accurate.

[Soxy]

Okay, so I promise I was not on any mind altering substance when I thought of this but--how do we know that life can only exist in terms of "carbon based" like here on earth? Isn't it possible some other sort of element could be the basis of life--thus making it not necessary for a planet to be "earth-like" for there to be life? That always has boggled my mind.

 

That and, when you send a letter abroad, you pay the US post office for a stamp--but how do the other post offices of the world make their money? Does the US post office send them part of the money, or do they just figure that it all evens out in the end?

[jackie hayes]

That's a little exaggerated, but, yes, relativity does say that. It would take a lot longer than a few minutes for the person to be dead, though.

Not if some guy traveling at the speed of light keeps running them over.

[StrangeSox]

Okay, so I promise I was not on any mind altering substance when I thought of this but--how do we know that life can only exist in terms of "carbon based" like here on earth? Isn't it possible some other sort of element could be the basis of life--thus making it not necessary for a planet to be "earth-like" for there to be life? That always has boggled my mind.

 

As far as we know, carbon-based is necessary for life, but we certainly don't know everything. I don't know if science has some how (accurately) ruled out other forms of life existing elsewhere.

 

Life is remarkably adaptable, so it wouldn't surprise me if non-carbon life were out there.

[Balta1701]

As far as we know, carbon-based is necessary for life, but we certainly don't know everything. I don't know if science has some how (accurately) ruled out other forms of life existing elsewhere.

 

Life is remarkably adaptable, so it wouldn't surprise me if non-carbon life were out there.

They key phrase that will usually be said is "Life as we know it". As far as we know, carbon is key to life because of its abundance and the way it behaves in chemical compounds. If there is some other energetic configuration out there that can give rise to a self-replicating organism on which natural selection acts, we simply have no concept of how it operates.

[witesoxfan]

Not if some guy traveling at the speed of light keeps running them over.

 

winnar

[HuskyCaucasian]

I think they found a way to get there... in theory. Travel through extra-dimensions with HyperDrive!

[Steve9347]

that's about the coolest thing i've read... ever.

[Steve9347]

As far as we know, carbon-based is necessary for life, but we certainly don't know everything. I don't know if science has some how (accurately) ruled out other forms of life existing elsewhere.

 

Life is remarkably adaptable, so it wouldn't surprise me if non-carbon life were out there.

 

As Ian Malcolm once said, "Life... finds a way."

 

Of course he was talking about frogs having sex with each other in a movie about dinosaurs being reborn, but heed these words of wisdom, all.