Goldilocks Planet

[filkertom]

Not too hot, not too cold -- juuuuuust right.







HOW FRICKIN FANTASTIC IS THAT!!!!11!!one!!!

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Save me a seat on the first ride out!

[skunktaur.livejournal.com]

There's a possible life-viable planet in my sign? Woo.

[ladysmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. We all knew it was bound to happen. There HAD to be at least one. But to find it in our lifetimes? Too cool!!!

[darthgm.livejournal.com]

I vote for the name "Daxam".

It's got a red sun and everything.

;D

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

I suggested Krypton, but Daxam works very well too.

[akawil]

It's not just that they found the one.

According to the paper, there've been maybe 13 or so stars, so far, with enough observations that they could spot a habitable planet, and they've *already* found one.

So either they got absurdly lucky, or habitable planets really are pretty common!

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

The tech is just getting to the point now where observers can spot Earth-sized bodies.

Planetary systems are surprisingly common (and in some places where we least expected them--around a pulsar, for instance). Selection effects in early instrumentation favored finding systems with Jupiters very close to their stars. We should start finding Sol-style systems fairly soon now.

Tom T.

[bronzite.livejournal.com]

Now that's something to sing about!

[saganth.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Remus from Star Trek - one side always locked toward the sun, extreme temperatures. There could be life in that narrow habitable terminator zone as the article suggests, but I wouldn't say this one quite earth-like *enough*. Now when they find a world even more like our own, then I'll REALLY be excited. But it *is* good news to find a planet close to our world's mass and required placement! it's a step in the right direction.

[jenrose]

Just like Earth my ass.

The place has a dwarf red star, is almost tidally locked, and it's three times the mass of Earth, which means more gravity.

Sounds... depressing.

That and the astronomer who proclaimed it to have a 100% chance of developing life? *headdesk*

Wouldn't mind visiting, you know, if the whole FTL could be dealt with, but it doesn't sound like the most pleasant place to live.

That said, I do find it encouraging that they're finding smaller planets in the Goldilocks zone.

With a laser propelled wisp craft, we could have a probe there about 22 years after launch. Have to develop the thing first though.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

It is more massive, but the surface gravity also depends on how large it is, which I don't think has been determined. A planet with 3 times Earths' mass will have Earth-normal surface gravity if its radius is about 1.7 times Earths' radius.

The tidal lock means you don't get a normal day-night cycle, and it is apt to be a little warm at noon, and chill over at midnight, but it may well be decent along the terminator line.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Life doesn't necessarily mean human or macrofauna/flora. That planet sounds pretty much perfect for a wide variety of microbial life, at the very least. Even the temperature extremes that they mention are not outside of life-bearing range; we have microbes that thrive in volcanic chutes and deep sea trenches.

This is tremendously exciting, I think.

[jenrose]

I'm not saying it isn't possible there's life. Or even that it isn't possible there's a wide variety of life.

But him saying there's 100% chance of life on *that* planet is just stupid. With stupid sauce.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Radio astronomy seems to indicate that the molecular precursors of the building blocks of life are self-assembling in giant molecular clouds. This would point toward Hoyle's old theory of panspermia (at least as far as radicals raining down on planetary surfaces during planetary formation goes.)

Our system has two planets that might have had life early (Venus and Mars), one currently teeming with life (Earth), two present potential worlds with under-ice life (Europa and Enceladus), and one that will be the right temperature a billion years from now and that has a huge carbon and water ice well to draw from (Titan).

The 100% figure can be tossed off to stupid excitement--this is a really historic discovery, after all--but I, personally, feel safe in saying that non-intelligent life is probably as common in our galaxy as dirt.

Tom

[lizziecrowe.livejournal.com]

TOO FRICKING COOL!!!!

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Not earthlike, but potentially habitable by someone else. They'd need pretty strange biologies, but we get those right here.

[smparadox.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily that different biologically - if there is an atmosphere, then it would moderate the temperature differences. Of course, the constant winds would be fierce, and in the middle of the dark side, you would need volcanism to support Earth-like life (ocean vent type life specifically).

[john-d-owen.livejournal.com]

Every time I see one of these announcements I think back to the Drake Equation, which calculated the likelihood of there being intelligent life out there in the rest of the Universe. With discoveries like this one factored in, the chances of life elsewhere are increasing in leaps and bounds.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I did two articles about this system three years ago when they discovered Gliese 581c.

http://www.urbanagora.com/2007/04/fermi-and-drake.html

and

http://www.urbanagora.com/2007/05/the-stock-market-forest-fires-and-the-fermi-paradox.html

I note with interest that there are now three discovered planets in this system that are on the edges of, or within, its habitable zone. (581c, the one I wrote about originally, is on the hotter edge.)

If they are all tide-locked, then it is possible that there may be habitable areas on all three of the HZ planets--just over the nightline on the hottest one, just over the dayline on g, the new one, and in the center of the hotzone for the coldest one.

A discovery of a system this potentially fertile this close really ups the statistical likelihood of habitable worlds being common, which again emphasizes the philosophical problem of the "great silence" that the Fermi Paradox describes. (We are still dealing with the statistics of small numbers, so nothing is close to certain.)

I'm leaning more and more toward the idea that it takes a long, long time for intelligent life to develop and that we're just the first ones on the block. The discovery of this new planet also indicates, in my opinion, that the radio searches have been looking at the wrong kind of stars--G stars may not be stable for long enough for advanced civilizations to develop. We should now emphasize a search for civs around K and M-type stars.

As soon as better details of the system come in, I'm dying to write a story set there.

Tom Trumpinski

[jasperjones22.livejournal.com]

My main concern is the fact that it's 40 light years away. Sadly right now, it would take 170,000 years on the fasted current space craft to get there. I we were able to make a ship that travels at the speed of light...thats still a 40 year trip (not saying that I wouldn't go or anything but...)

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Gliese is 20.3 light years away. That's a factor of 8000 difference in number of likely stars with habitable planets, since the number of stars in a cubic space goes up as the cube of the radius.

We're not too far away (probably a generation if we mounted a 60s style space program) from building a lightsail ship that could take a small programmed probe there.

Tom T.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

There's an error in the article that Tom linked to (not surprising, news services are notoriously bad in reporting science).

The article states that Gliese has one-third of the power of the Sun. In reality, it has one-third of the *mass* of the Sun. It's luminosity is about 0.01 solar.

Tom T.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

I noticed that the planet is 20 light years from Earth, 3 times as dense so heavier gravity but not so strong that humanoids can not develop there, and is circling a red sun. Great Rao, I believe they have found Krypton!

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

They're calling it Zarmina's World, after the wife of the PI of the paper.

How human is that, after all?

Here's some wallpaper for you....

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/Gliese_581.html

I *love* its solar system.

Tom T.