Tha planet is Gliese 581g, one of at least six low-mass worlds orbiting the dim red-dwarf star Gliese 581 just 20 light-years away in Libra. The orbits were teased apart from 240 high-precision radial-velocity measurements, spanning 11 years, tracking the tiny gravitational wobbles that the planets induce in the star.
The star is Gliese 581, a dim M3 dwarf with about a third the Sun's a diameter, a third the Sun's mass, and 1.3% of the Sun's energy output. Although it's one of our near stellar neighbors, it shines at only magnitude 10.6; it's visible in most amateur telescopes but not binoculars (at right ascension 15h 19.4m, declination –7° 43′).
The planet is in the "Goldilocks zone" of space around a star where surface temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form.
"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."
If confirmed, the planet would be the most Earth-like that has ever been discovered in another solar system and the first strong contender for a habitable one.
Zak wrote:This sounds pretty fascinating, and with only 20 light years away, it's not even totally out of reach.
JeffSFO wrote:Yes, fascinating, but not out of reach?
) can't go there for the weekend, but for space standards, 20 light years isn't really that far away. The fastest man-made object so far, the Helios probe, reached a speed of approx. 240,000 km/h. That means it would need 788,394,206 hours to reach Gliese 581g. That is only 90,000 years. A stone's throw in space travel...
Zak wrote:That is only 90,000 years.
AndesSMF wrote:The system was already well-known to contain planets, and for a while I thought this was an old story. Guess they found a new one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581
It has since been shown that under known terrestrial planet climate models, Gliese 581 c is likely to have a runaway greenhouse effect, and hence is probably not habitable.
Zak wrote:This sounds pretty fascinating, and with only 20 light years away, it's not even totally out of reach.
AndesSMF wrote:The system was already well-known to contain planets, and for a while I thought this was an old story. Guess they found a new one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581
An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.
Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.
A member of the Australian chapter of SETI, the organisation that looks for communication from distant planets, Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a 'suspicious' signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g.
JLAmber wrote:It appears that the location of the planet is the same as the origin of a mysterious pulse of light that was reported two years ago:-
http://news1.capitalbay.com/news/gliese ... otted.htmlAn astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.
Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.
A member of the Australian chapter of SETI, the organisation that looks for communication from distant planets, Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a 'suspicious' signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g.
Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008
Lucas wrote:Ahh, welp, they just nuked themselves in to oblivion
The remarkable coincidence adds another layer of mystery to the announcement last night that scientists had discovered Gliese 581g - the most Earth-like planet ever found.
And Dr Steven Vogt who led the study at the University of California, Santa Cruz, today said that he was '100 per cent sure ' that there was life on the planet.
The planet lies in the star's 'Goldilocks zone' - the region in space where conditions are neither too hot or too cold for liquid water to form oceans, lakes and rivers.
The planet also appears to have an atmosphere, a gravity like our own and could well be capable of life. Researchers say the findings suggest the universe is teeming with world like our own.
'If these are rare, we shouldn't have found one so quickly and so nearby,'
'The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 per cent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy.'
He told Discovery News: 'Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it'.
Zak wrote:Should it be received and returned, we would know by 2050 if there is intelligent life on the planet.
