Kompressor

This May Very Well Be the First New Earth



You are looking at what could be the fourth planet on the Gliese 581 star system, 20.3 light years from Earth. If the NASA artist rendition looks very much like our Earth... it's because it is similar to Earth.

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star. A starship traveling at near the speed of light would only take 20.3 years to get there, which is not that much. Until now, astronomers had discovered five planets around this star. Some of them were too close to it, making them too hot to be habitable. Others were too far and too cold. But now, a sixth planet has been discovered right on the "habitable zone", the fourth in distance from the star: Gliese 581g.

If the discoveries from the planet hunters at University of California Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington are right, Gliese 581g could be habitable.



Now, before you jump into the Enterprise and go there camping, roast some marshmallows, and get back leaving a lot of beer bottles and crap behind, being potentially habitable doesn't mean that we can just go there and thrive. It doesn't even mean that this planet is full of little green men or buxom big blue women. It just means that this is a planet that could sustain life, with liquid water and an atmosphere.

Gliese 581g has three to four times the mass of Earth, orbiting the star at an zippy 37 days. According to data gathered by the Keck I Telescope HIRES spectrometer, it's a rocky planet with a "solid surface and enough gravity to hold to an atmosphere."

More importantly, according to Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, not only their "findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet" but "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."

In other words, the chances of the Universe being bubbling with life of all kinds and forms just jumped beyond our most optimistic hopes.

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The Rev

I wonder if we will send a probe there and check things out...



The Rev

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adventure

^ well get there in 2000 years!

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Coming Full Range

Štulic

What a load of crap, sorry Rev but I wish I could be an artist and get a job at NASA to do nothing else but draw my artistic impressions or expressions for that matter, of distant galaxies, stars or God forbid intel-life-habitable planets which we wont be able to see properly for centuries to come.

Also "first new Earth", because of that stupid hairy psycho Einstein who made so much sense, we think this planet is a discovery by men and it just happened now?
I hope he would still be alive to clarify the situation, and tell the world that it's "relatively" not really a discovery.

This fucker among over a trillion others, are and have been out there, regardless of us whatsoever

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Kompressor

It is a discovery, not an invention.

It was there, and now we know it's there. That's a discovery.

Plus, you'd be surprised at how accurate radio telescopes are at reading chemical makeups of distant objects.

Gotta love mathematics, it is universal after all.

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yo.

lol @ Stulic comparing himself to Einstein

like he knows whats up



Oh and whats up Komp? thread jackin?
(although this is in better format, the other has already evolved into a thread with much substance)

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SmokeaJoint

I love how skeptical people (Stulic) are. Just another sign of the idiot masses ruling.

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Kompressor

Didn't realize other people had posted something similar. [Edit: based on the timestamps, my thread is older by 16.5 hours]

I like my thread though, has more facts, pictures, and sources.


The astrophysicist who discovered Zarmina describes life on "second Earth"

Steve Vogt is the UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist who discovered Zarmina, the first recorded Earthlike planet outside our solar system. He told io9 what a human colony there would be like, and why he believes the planet already harbors life.

spoke to Vogt at his home in Santa Cruz by phone last night. The planet's official name is Gliese 581g, but Vogt has nicknamed it Zarmina, which is his wife's name.



You've said in interviews that you're sure there's life on the planet. Why do you believe that?

SV: Somebody asked me my opinion, and I gave it. I've actually received a lot of criticism for saying that, as if I'm a bad scientist for stating what I believe. I don't have any facts that prove anything like that - I just have my opinions. It's hard to make this obvious in a soundbite but the universe is a vast place and most of it is totally unavailable for life as we know it. There are two things in the universe you can't get around: Temperature and gravity. So if you are in interstellar space you're at 2.7 degrees kelvin. Your atoms are hardly vibrating and you're not going to be alive. Life as we know it can't survive. So you have to be near a star. That's good, but stars have gravity and you can fall into them. Your only hope is to be near a star but not falling into it – you need an orbit. And that's magical. That's where you can have enough warmth, but not turn into a cloud of plasma because you've fallen into the star. So when you have a planet in orbit and it's the right size and in the right orbit [like Zarmina], it's a very special place. There are many planets like that but we didn't know that [until our discovery].

I'm not an expert in biology but when you read about the conditions under which life took hold on this planet – it was a terrible place 4 billion years ago, with no oxygen. Yet life came on the scene quickly. Something hit Earth so hard it broke off a chunk that created the Moon. And yet life kept coming back over and over again. You learn from that that it's hard to stop life.

So when I look at a place like this planet, with strong gravity and a good temperature – all those conditions are just perfect. It would be easier for life to evolve on that planet than on Earth. So, heck I'm pretty sure there's life there. Maybe you won't be filming Corona commercials on the beach there but it will be life.



Why do we assume that you need to have an Earthlike planet with liquid water to sustain life? Why not life on a Super Earth or a gas giant?

It depends on what you mean by life. Sure, you can imagine gas clouds that are alive. But we're talking about what we would recognize as life. It comes down to whether you could you make a hamburger out of it, or it could make one out of you. Life as we know it requires organic chemistry, which requires liquid water. But sure, if you had some other form which is made of silicon circuits that's different.

So this planet is bigger and more massive than Earth. Would the gravity there be too much for a human colony?

That's what's interesting – the gravity wouldn't be too much. It's three to four times the mass of Earth but 20-50% bigger. So there's more real estate there. The gravity would feel very similar to Earth - you'd be about 1 G or 1.5 Gs heavier. You wouldn't be too shocked, though you might feel heavy enough to sign up for Jenny Craig. You could stand up and walk around - you wouldn't need to crawl. 2 or 3 Gs is tough, but this is just a little bit stronger gravity than the Earth. That's a good thing because it means there's less chance of the atmosphere escaping. You need atmosphere so that water can have enough pressure to stay in liquid state. On Mars, for example, the atmosphere is so thin that water can't remain liquid.

What about the weather on this planet? It's tidally locked, which means one side always faces the sun and one side is always in darkness. Wouldn't there be incredibly strong winds moving from the hot side to the cold side?

People thought there'd be hellacious winds. But there have been 3D climate models of tidally locked planets and calculations show there would be high altitude winds like jet streams on our planet. But according to these models, the maximum winds on the surface would be 30-40 miles per hour on the hot side. On the dark side, winds would be 0-10 miles per hour. It would be quite pleasant. The winds would carry heat from the hot side to the cold side in the high altitudes and then the cold winds would come back down over the poles. The winds would circulate on a large scale like on Earth and that would even out the temperature somewhat. Some of that depends on whether it's covered by oceans or continents.

Can't you use spectrometry to figure out if there are oceans?

We can't resolve that question using conventional technology just from the light of its star. The planet doesn't transit the star, so we don't have a chance to see it. [Editor's note: When planets transit a star, astronomers can use spectrometry to see light moving through a planet's atmosphere, and determine the chemical composition of its surface].

Given the planet's temperature, where would be a good spot to put a colony?

The terminator is the line between light and dark and that would be where it's most comfortable. Along the terminator you'd want to be down near the equator because the poles would be pretty cold. So you'd look to the intermediate to low latitudes near the equator. The sun would sit constantly on horizon. You could tune your temperature by moving towards the day or the dark until you were comfy. The temperatures there might be anything between 160 F to -20. There would be lots of regions around the terminator that have different temperatures. We'd pick an equatorial area that's warmer like Mexico or Equador. You'd be able to stand outside in your shirtsleeves. It might be tropical. And if you wanted a different temperature, you'd move your longitude.

Are you working on locating other Earthlike planets? Where's the next likely target?

Absolutely. This is just one of many systems we're tracking [at Keck Observatory]. We have a 1500 star target list. We're focusing on the 400 nearest ones. I expect we'll be finding more Earthlike planets. Mainly we're looking at red dwarf stars - those have highest priority. The top priorities for us are the nearest red dwarfs that have hints of planets or are quiet. It's not really clear which will pop next.

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SmokeaJoint

Yeah Komp, your thread rules. Srsly.

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Štulic

I'm not skeptical, I said already there are billions of planets in the Universe with perfect habitable conditions, we just can't see them and will never be able to travel there.

Columbus didn't really discover America either.

Edit: sorry, or Vespucci for that matter.

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SmokeaJoint

I was referring to the posts in FB's version mostly, but I can also see that I may have misinterpreted your tone. Since that seems to be the case, lemme apologize.

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SageTree

Thanks Komp, your thread is much easier to get through, cheers.

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yo.

Sorry bout the accusation Komp I dunno how I didn't see this in New Threads before the other
But yeah no dis to fenderbender but this one is layed out more factual.

While his is more opinionated, they both have their ups and downs.

So thanks to both of ya for the good find
&

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fenderbender

lol komp damn you your thread has pictures! ahhhh

also i probably ruined my own thread by going off with possibilities moreso then facts about this discovery, those possibilities got both positive and negative reactions lol. Id hate to see my thread die, as there is also a lot of good information in there, not just opinions. Most of those opinions are based by facts...lol im just butthurt


anyway, I love this discovery as it has got me thinking like crazy. This has been in my thoughts for a good while now, and to actually have this discovery give it more substance is sooo awesome. "oh the possibilities" is my thought process. Love it.


and i did not see your thread either komp, mybad. Thanks for more info, keep it coming, and when you get a chance respond to that second pm i sent ya as now i am even more interested

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fenderbender

also WTF wolfwood...

its LOVE and PEACE

not peace and love

jeez man cmon now

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Kompressor

Sorry, thought I had gotten to your PM before.

Back on topic:

One thing that i've noticed is that if this planet is tidally locked, probably means there's not a spinning core. That in turn means there probably is no magnetic field to shield life [as we know it] from solar radiation. So, if we eventually make our way out there, we couldn't run around naked. That of course being the premise that there's enough oxygen to support nudity anyway.

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Bearsy

I love how Stulic is the voice of reason in both of these threads yet he's the one being shit on by people.

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Kompressor

Care to explain?

I don't think stulic is being mean, but it is a discovery. Just because we can't get there doesn't mean we don't have tools to learn about what's out there.

Oh, and the reason Columbus is credited for the discovery of America is because he was the first to record it in modern history, not because it didn't seemingly exist before he landed on it. I mean, it's already a pretty clear fact that Vikings were the first Europeans to land on the Americas, they just didn't share any record of it.

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SmokeaJoint

Thats a good point about the core not spinning. Not much use to us if the surface is getting bombarded by solar radiation. Although, thinking about it, if that was the case all the water would have boiled off by now.

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fenderbender

Im pretty sure that the idea that the planet is tidally locked, is just that, an idea, a theory. Obviously so is everything else discussed here, BUT what im getting at is WHO KNOWS. Regardless of if this planet can actually indeed harbor life or not, This is still the first planet we have discovered in the perfect spot for earth like life to have a chance...and that alone is such a huge discovery it is mind blowing. This is just the beginning and i cannot wait to see what is dicovered next. Hopefully it continues to build on my current thought process... ACTUALLY fuck that i wanna be mindfucked and awakened to even NEW possibilities.


And with stulic being the voice of reason...(dont worry i wont go off)... I agree with what stulic is saying, but the reason he is making his argument is absurd. His argument is that this is not a big deal. That we should expect this so why is the discovery a big deal. That is his entire argument and that is it lol. Voice of knowledge? Bearsy idk what you are thinkin agreeing with that either man lol. I aint shitting on him in this thread but i will shit on that argument. He for one should be extremely excited about this like the rest of us because this is yet ANOTHER step to PROVING his THEORY.

sry if that is considered shitting on stulic but his logic fucking sucks and i cant help it.

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