Possible Earth-like planet found

[Kodos]

hxxp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070425/ap_on_sc/habitable_planet_5

Potentially habitable planet found

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"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 planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

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 wave lengths. 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. 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 1 1/2 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 midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. 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.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

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.

[SFL Cat]

home sick, Kodos?

[RedKingGold]

Another planet to conquer?

[RedKingGold]

Damn you SFL. Just a little too slow on the trigger for the first alien joke.

[Young Drachma]

Oh shit. We're doomed now.

[sterlingice]

Neato. Now let's get that warp drive working so we can go see

SI

[RendeR]

Warp theory works, its the pwoer requirements we can't manage at this point.

We COULD make a warp bubble today, but it would be about the size of half a needle point.

not much room in that for a starship =)

[heybrad]

It just seems appropriate.

[Coffee Warlord]

[Rizon]

Screw Earth, I'm going home.

[Fonzie]

I call dibs.

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by Fonzie

I call dibs.

Sorry, it's already occupied by the Vorlons. We may visit in one million years.

[Fonzie]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Sorry, it's already occupied by the Vorlons. We may visit in one million years.

Damn.

[Tigercat]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Sorry, it's already occupied by the Vorlons. We may visit in one million years.

Do we know what kind of food they like? I hate it when you bring steaks to the new neighbors to find out they eat only plants, certain meats, or strands of subatomic particles that our limited brain can't perceive much less coat in BBQ sauce.

And I don't care if they are Kodos's friends, if I find a "How to cook forty humans" book I am not staying for more than 2 drinks.

[kingfc22]

Let's nuke'em

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by kingfc22

Let's nuke'em

Kill them over there so we won't have to fight them on Main Street!

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by kingfc22

Let's nuke'em

Only way to be sure.

[Kodos]

Just make sure you do it from orbit.

[Bad-example]

The only good bug is a dead bug.

[JediKooter]

I sure wouldn't mind getting me some more of that Arcturian poontang.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by RendeR

Warp theory works, its the pwoer requirements we can't manage at this point.

We COULD make a warp bubble today, but it would be about the size of half a needle point.

not much room in that for a starship =)

Ping: Fantastic Voyage

[RendeR]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Ping: Fantastic Voyage

No, that idea is totally bogus, you can't shrink matter, it just doesn't work. Physics and all that.

[Butter]

So, with the recent discovery of the ability to move a point of light faster than light speed, that doesn't discount the physics a bit?

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by RendeR

No, that idea is totally bogus, you can't shrink matter, it just doesn't work. Physics and all that.

Are you calling Coolio a liar?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TZWr4tsU74

[JeffNights]

Originally Posted by RendeR

Warp theory works, its the pwoer requirements we can't manage at this point.

We COULD make a warp bubble today, but it would be about the size of half a needle point.

not much room in that for a starship =)

Sheeeiiitttt...ever seen Interspace???

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by RendeR

No, that idea is totally bogus, you can't shrink matter, it just doesn't work. Physics and all that.

I still maintain that probably 99% of everything we claim is utterly impossible due to Physics (or any other applicable scientific law) is wrong. We have nowhere near the understanding of things to discount anything as impossible.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

I still maintain that probably 99% of everything we claim is utterly impossible due to Physics (or any other applicable scientific law) is wrong. We have nowhere near the understanding of things to discount anything as impossible.

2+2 does not equal 3, no matter how much you might wish it to be so. Welcome to Physics!


-Abe

[rkmsuf]

I claim this planet as a Little League recruiting district for the state of NH. Williamsport here we come!

[Senator]

I wonder if they have global warming, and if so, who is to blame?

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

2+2 does not equal 3, no matter how much you might wish it to be so. Welcome to Physics!


-Abe

It does for very small values of 2.

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by RedKingGold

Another planet to conquer?

I ♥ humans.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by Senator

I wonder if they have global warming, and if so, who is to blame?

The Chinese.

[Drake]

All your Earth-like planets are belong to us.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

I still maintain that probably 99% of everything we claim is utterly impossible due to Physics (or any other applicable scientific law) is wrong. We have nowhere near the understanding of things to discount anything as impossible.

exactly. i can't stand hearing that "this planet doesn't have the ability to sustain life". all our knowledge about where life can be sustained is from an oxygen based planet where water-dependent beings live. we know nothing about nothing.

people thought the heart was the center of thinking before we found out about the brain. and we thought the world was flat. so much for those theories.

[Kodos]

Some people still believe the world is flat. And that we didn't land on the moon. And that the Alien Autopsy video was fake!

[Pyser]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

people thought the heart was the center of thinking before we found out about the brain. and we thought the world was flat. so much for those theories.

wouldnt it be cool for one of those mindblowing revelations to happen in our lifetimes?

i cant even imagine what it would be like.

though i guess you just take something thats been long thought to be fact, and where there are like 4 people saying, no youre wrong, maybe thats it.

so maybe there are aliens out there. who knows.

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

2+2 does not equal 3, no matter how much you might wish it to be so. Welcome to Physics!


-Abe

Yes, and there are several components of the universe that we've arbitrarily invented because we don't have a bloody clue what it really is/how things really work. Yay Dark Matter. Welcome to Hollyw...Physics!

The fact that we've assigned the vast majority of matter to what amounts to shrugging your shoulders and saying 'fuckit' is a pretty good idea that we don't have a damn clue what we're talking about - making ruling out something as 'impossible' just silly.

...and then we get to quantum mechanics. *head explodes*