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Old 04-25-2007, 01:05 AM   #1
Doppleganger
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Our new backyard (News).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Space.com
Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life

An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced today.

Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the "Goldilocks" distance—not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away.

And while astronomers are not yet able to look for signs of biology on the planet, the discovery is a milestone in planet detection and the search for extraterrestrial life, one with the potential to profoundly change our outlook on the universe.

”The goal is to find life on a planet like the Earth around a star like the Sun. This is a step in that direction,” said study leader Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. “Each time you go one step forward you are very happy.”

The new planet is about 50 percent bigger than Earth and about five times more massive. The new “super-Earth” is called Gliese 581 C, after its star, Gliese 581, a diminutive red dwarf star located 20.5 light-years away that is about one-third as massive as the Sun.

Smallest to date

Gliese 581 C is the smallest extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” discovered to date. It is located about 15 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun; one year on the planet is equal to 13 Earth days. Because red dwarfs, also known as M dwarfs, are about 50 times dimmer than the Sun and much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them while still remaining within their habitable zones, the spherical region around a star within which a planet’s temperature can sustain liquid water on its surface.

Because it lies within its star’s habitable zone and is relatively close to Earth, Gliese 581 C could be a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, said study team member Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France.

“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” Delfosse said.

Two other planets are known to inhabit the red dwarf system. One is a 15 Earth-mass “hot-Jupiter” gas planet discovered by the same team two years ago, which orbits even closer to its star than does Gliese 581 C. Another is an 8 Earth-mass planet discovered at the same time as Gliese 581 C, but which lies outside its star’s habitable zone.

Possible waterworld

Computer models predict Gliese 581 C is either a rocky planet like Earth or a waterworld covered entirely by oceans.

“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius [32 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit], and water would thus be liquid,” Udry said.

The scientists discovered the new world using the HARP instrument on the European Southern Observatory 3.6 meter telescope in La Sille, Chile. They employed the so-called radial velocity, or “wobble,” technique, in which the size and mass of a planet are determined based on small perturbations it induces in its parent star’s orbit via gravity.

Udry said there was a fair amount of time between the calculation of Gliese 581 C’s size and the realization it was within its star’s habitable zone. “That came at the end,” Udry said.

When it did hit him, Udry knew he would be spending time fielding phone calls from the media. “You right away think about the journalists who will like it very much,” he told SPACE.com.

More to come

David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) who was not involved in the study, said the new finding is an “absolutely fantastic discovery.”

“It means there probably are many more such planets out there,” Charbonneau said in a telephone interview. Whether Gliese 581 C harbors life is still unknown, but “it satisfies for the first time a key requirement.”

Charbonneau also praised the team’s technical skills. “The wobble induced on the star by each of these planets is really tiny—it’s just a few meters a second. That means their measurement precision is exquisite,” he said.

David Latham, another astronomer at Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, echoed other scientists’ praise of the discovery but said the next step is to find a similar world where the orbit of the habitable planet carries it between Earth and its parent star. This will allow scientists to observe it using the transit technique, whereby the small dimming starlight caused by the planet’s passage across the face of its sun can be used to calculate its size.

Only then can scientists determine for certain whether the world is rocky or covered by water, Latham said.

Alan Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said the new planet’s potential for liquid water made it “fascinating." Gliese 581 C “is the closest planet to another Earth that has been found to date. I hope the SETI folks are listening,” Boss said.

Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI institute, said the Gliese 581 system has in fact been looked at twice before for signs of intelligent life. The first time was in 1995 using the Parks Radio Telescope in Australia; the second time occured in 1997 using the Greenbank Radio Telescope in West Virgina. Both times revealed nothing.

“It has been looked at twice, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at it again,” Shostak said. “And indeed we should because this is the best candidate the solar planet guys have come up with yet.”

Shostak said he was “jazzed” by the discovery. “This is pointing to something that in the past has only been an assumption, namely that Earth-sized worlds are not rare,” he said. “We know of only two [planets in the habitable zone]. We know this one and we know our own. But two is better than one.”

Shostak said the Gliese 581 system will likely be looked at again over much wider range of the radio spectrum when the new Allen Telescope Array begins operations this summer.

“You could say it’s going to the head of the class,” he said.
Source.

...

We couldn't walk on this planet (un-aided - do we have the technology to reduce gravity?), but still, it's all the more reason to INVEST IN OUTER SPACE...first we get the asteroid belt for more new raw materials, then we can finally conquer the galactic stage!
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Old 04-25-2007, 01:25 AM   #2
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

My reply.
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Old 04-25-2007, 02:29 AM   #3
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

I don't doubt for a minute that this planet isn't inhabitable. If people weren't crushed by the gravity, they'd freeze and possibly fry, or suffocate. The materials on the planet are likely better used for terra-forming something a little closer to home, like Mars.

Then again, we should conquer Europa before moving on beyond our solar system, and hit the asteroid belt before that - if we get the ball rolling, we could be in for quite a fun future in the next couple reincarnations. ;)
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Old 04-25-2007, 08:48 AM   #4
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Wouldn't the heavy gravity be hard on your heart?
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Old 04-25-2007, 01:35 PM   #5
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Arrogance? Hardly. All known life is carbon based, and only carbon can form complex compounds the way it does. If anything, it is a reasonable assumption.
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Old 04-25-2007, 02:34 PM   #6
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Although there's something to be said for the very limited number of atoms on the Periodic Table which react in so many ways as carbon does, I think that what dami is trying to suggest is that life is ultimately "an entity in homeostasis in the midst of an ever-fluctuating world" and that there's more than one way to achieve homeostasis in open systems. To put it into perspective ... just because all PCs on the planet have a silicon microprocessor doesn't mean that that was the only option available at the dawn of time. Computers could have had gallium, or arsenic, or germanium processors. Instead, they use silicon. Because it simply happened, and all computers ever since have been the same way.

Could you argue that "silicon is used because it is the best"? Yes. But could Dami argue that "best" is a relative term which changes depending on what the test conditions are? Absolutely. For instance, if the operating temperature the first computer was built to withstand was 100 degrees above the melting point of silicon, it would hardly have made for a "good candidate." Goodness is relative.
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Old 04-25-2007, 05:08 PM   #7
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Quote:
All life on Earth is carbon-based. Considering that we haven't even explored 0.01% of the galaxy, let alone the universe, it's reasonable to assume that Earth does not, in fact, contain every known element in the universe.
I think it is safe to say that it does. As atoms get larger and larger, they get less and less stable; almost all of the transuraniumm elements have been created artificially, and almost all of them have extremely short half-lives. I think it is extremely safe to say that we have discovered every naturally occurring element. All of the others occur only in laboratories and never in nature.

Quote:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; making an argument that because we don't know of any other life-forming elements ergo carbon is the only element that lifeforms can be based off of is fallacious.
I was making an argument using the science and information that was available to me. And the information that is available me says that it is very unlikely that any element other than carbon could allow for life as we know it.

Quote:
...only life can exist in conditions that humans can exist in is arrogance.
Now, I never said I agreed with that.

I really don't appreciate being labeled as "arrogant" either. Anyone who knows me knows that I am very open-minded and forward-thinking when it comes to the definition of "life". Hell, I even consider beings such as Data and Chii to be fully alive, even though they don't have a single living cell in their body, simply because they are self-aware beings. I'm just having trouble seeing, scientifically, how biological life could be anything other than carbon-based. Arrogance has nothing to do with it.
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Old 04-25-2007, 08:35 PM   #8
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Iron-56 is the most stable isotope... That is how existence will end, with everything going to that.

Re: Other/alien life? I don't care... unless it will shut up the hard core conservative Christians and get them to stop bleeting about ID and creationism.
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Old 04-25-2007, 09:24 PM   #9
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kasumi Violet
Iron-56 is the most stable isotope... That is how existence will end, with everything going to that.
Not sure I agree with that necessarily, since if there's one observation we can make about the Universe, it's that things tend towards disorder. I say "not necessarily" as, on the flipside, Life is the single greatest defier of entropy the Universe has ever known. We are Order in a world of Chaos.
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Old 04-26-2007, 01:58 AM   #10
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kasumi Violet
Re: Other/alien life? I don't care... unless it will shut up the hard core conservative Christians and get them to stop bleeting about ID and creationism.
He he he...speaking of that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by CrescentOnline
Anti-evolution museum scheduled to open
PETERSBURG, Ky.—Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah’s ark and some managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That was probably a dinosaur. Exhibits showing this and more will be at Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in northern Kentucky.

Scheduled to open Memorial Day, the museum is being built by a non-profit group called Answers in Genesis.

The museum is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible: The world was created in six, 24-hour days, some time between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Humans appeared on Day 6, and they did not evolve from anything.

“No one else has ever built a place where you can experience biblical history and merge it with the science,” said Ken Ham, Answers founder and president.
Source.
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Old 04-26-2007, 01:14 PM   #11
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Since that museum is being opened in Kentucky, well that state already bleeds with anti evolution super bible fanatics anyways, so it is only inevitable that they'd create a 'proper christian' museum.
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Old 04-28-2007, 09:14 AM   #12
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

<3

I've been waiting for this for a while now.

I don't know why people are all "We're totally going to land humans here."

Because we'd have to Defy Gravity to even think about living the moment we got in its orbit.

Nifty though. The potential of finding extraterrestrial life is bitchin'.
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Old 04-29-2007, 05:46 PM   #13
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Re: Our new backyard (News).

Talon, atoms from unstable isotopes to stable isotopes. Stable isotopes are difficult to make unstable. That's the logic behind it. While SYSTEMS may go to disorder, atoms, not so much.
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