Earthlike Planet Orbiting Nearby Star

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers in Europe have announced the discovery of a planet with only 5 times the Earth's mass, orbiting a red dwarf star 20 light years away. It orbits the star so closely that it only takes 13 days to go around... but the star is so cool that the temperature of the planet is between 0 and 40 Celsius. At this temperature there could be liquid water. Models indicate the planet is either rocky like the Earth or covered in an ocean. While it's not known if there actually is liquid water on the planet, this is a really big discovery, and indicates that we are getting ever closer to finding another Earth orbiting an alien star."

Comments

NOT so fast....

[heauxmeaux]

Turns out it's just Rosie O'Donnell

Hi-rez imaging

[pyro_peter_911]

Hi-rez imaging of the planet shows that there's already three Starbucks stores, a bridge project sponsored by Ted Stephens, and fourteen RIAA lawyers looking for copyright infringers.

Peter

Re:Hi-rez imaging

[linzeal]

So it is devoid of life, culture and civilization in other words.

Re:Hi-rez imaging

[celerityfm]

I say nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Re:Hi-rez imaging

[gotgenes]

So it is devoid of life, culture and civilization in other words.

No, it's just devoid of intelligent life.

Re:Hi-rez imaging

[celerityfm]

Regret dawned after that post, as this came to mind:

"It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said `I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,' a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time . . . and a dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvant leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment, the words `I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle' drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war. Eventually of course, after their galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our Galaxy -- now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the planet Earth, where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but are powerless to prevent it.

`It's just life,' they say."

Indeed. RIP, Mr. Adams.

omg omg

[drfrog]

planet orbiting a red star?
on the same day kryptonite is found

coincidence?

of course!

More links:

[Beolach]

The BBC and Scientific American have good quotes from Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the results. Others are already calling it "possibly habitable".

Very cool news!

Caturday reply to the news

[steak]

I threw this together in a couple minutes after reading this.

http://x014.uploaderx.net/x/astronautcat.jpg

[m]

This is worth sending a probe.

[plasmacutter]

We are currently developing technologies which allow a maximum speed of 0.6 X the speed of light.

if you create a probe with an ion drive and send it off in the next 10 years we could be looking at surveys of the planet in question by 2070.

quick maths on gravity

[quenda]

Assuming its the same density as Earth, cube root of 5 is 1.7, so 1.7x the radius. Gravity is mass/r^2, 5/1.7^2 x earth, so 1.7 or 70% more. ie surface gravity only goes up with the cube root of mass, for a constant density, so 5x isn't as bad as it sounds. But if it has more rock, and less iron core, the surface might me much nicer.

Re:How long to get there?

[s20451]

instantaneously by the perspective of the traveller

Unfortunately the traveller would not percieve the passage of time any more, having been transformed into raspberry jam by the accelleration forces.

Re:How long to get there?

[Wonko the Sane]

having been transformed into raspberry jam by the accelleration forces.

I like to think of it as salsa, actually.

Re:Strange new worlds

[JanneM]

That's like saying "I'm dating this girl who's like Jessica Alba. She's latina, has dark hair, and is only five times Jessica Alba's size! So you see, she is plainly like Jessica Alba!".

But it's still a living, breathing girl. By the same token, other discovered extrasolar planets would like trying to have a meaningful relationship with a bulk freighter.

Re:Uninhabital new worlds

[SignalX]

It is good to see everyone has a positive attitude for space exploration. I must assume that, in your opinion, there is no good reason to go to Mars or the Moon?

Also remember that were you got the information on gravitational pull and the atmosphere for this planet is speculative at best.
1) 2.25 times that of our own gravitational pull would not be ideal for us to live but, it doesn't mean nothing could live there. I pull 2.25g's with my car on a dry skid pad, I have not died yet.
2) Really?
3) Yes the planet is closer to its sun that ours, but if this planet is like ours, the atmosphere filters out most of the radiation. The star closest to them does not spit out the magnitude of radiation that ours does due to its size.
4) If there is atmosphere like ours with water in it, it will hold some of the heat as it passes out of its suns rays and therefore should be just as turbulent.

Also some things to think about:

Even if the planet is 2 times as big as our planet, it could be spinning faster than ours. This would help off set the gravitational pull on our bodies at the surface.

No one is saying this is a planet to colonize, but with some of our technology and determination, it could be a waypoint in the stars for us to refuel and grab water before we continue our adventures further into space.

Just my two cents,

-X

Re:How long to get there?

[Wonko the Sane]

Don't think so. If that were the case, it could be 2,000,000,000 light years, and it would still be instantaneous. It doesn't make any sense. Of course, neither does the ability to travel at light-speed.

As you approach the speed of light, your perception of time changes with respect to a stationary observer. If you could actually achieve the speed of light (you can't) the transit time would be 0, no matter how much distance you had traveled.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Tag: theresnoplacelikehome

[icebrain]

We don't propose abandoning Earth like a "foreclosed duplex"--and we certainly don't advocate letting things go to hell here while we look for a new place to trash. The idea is survival--colonizing other planets helps ensure survival of the species.
We could go completely green and make Earth a complete paradise--and then some rock could come along and kill all of us.

And, chances are, the knowledge we would gain just from trying to build a "slowboat" colony ship (one that does not travel at an appreciable fraction of c) would be of immense value in helping preserve Earth's environment. Such a ship would be an entire self-contained, self-sufficient ecosystem, having to last hundreds, if not thousands, of years with no resupply and no dependable external power source. Creating such a system would lead to incredibly-efficient systems, and the lessons could be transferred to everyday engineering projects and other systems. Think water reclamation, ultra-efficient farming and food production techniques (solves hunger problems too!), clean, efficient sources of energy...

OFQ

[orkysoft]

(Obligatory Futurama Quote)
From the Futurama episode Love and Rocket:

Fry: Wow Bender, are you and the ship an item? I mean, I know you're both items but -- how can you date a ship anyway? It'd be like me dating a really fat lady. And living inside her. And she'd be all like -- <ship noises>
Bender: Fry, in order for me to get busy at maximum efficiency, I need a girl with a big four hundred ton booty!
Leela: Bender, dating your co-worker and primary mode of transportation is immoral, illogical and a violation of interstellar shipping statute 437-B.
Bender: That's what makes it so nasty!

Re:Uninhabital new worlds

[246o1]

I would be willing to bet that humans could live in 2.5 G. The human body is incredibly resilient, especially when it has grown up in a new environment. There are people living everywhere from sea level to several miles up, and in environments ranging from yearly average temperatures of over 30C to under 0C.

This does raise an interesting point, however. A great deal of money and research time has been spent studying how human and animal physiology react to low- or micro-gravity, but I am not aware of any long-term studies of higher G's, such as raising monkeys in a giant centrifuge or somesuch. Sure, this would take a lot of money, but hopefully less than for sending things to space, and it is vital knowledge for space exploration (long-term acceleration or living on these planets are the two key reasons).

The discovery of this planet provides some hope for those of us who hope the human race will escape Earth before we destroy it, or those who hope for Earth-similar life. And we can only expect the discovery of these planets to accelerate in the future, as out technology makes it easier to find them.

Re:How long to get there?

[shaitand]

We don't have a people shortage, or even a crazy people shortage. Skip the probe and send volunteers. Promise enough funds to support their families for life and you will get cheap volunteers from third world nations that are throwing babies into rivers due to overpopulation. You can't lose.

Re:My Hope

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It is [a religion]. Atheism assumes without evidence. That is just as much a matter of faith as believing in creator(s).

Hardly. Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Re:How long to get there?

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

I wanted to mod you up but couldn't resist asking a question.

What about space dust? INAA (I'm not an astro-physicist)but I don't think that the main problem is a lack of speed. Eventually we will work out how to go faster and faster. For me the problem is those little bits of rock and grit in the way. Even at 0.75C travelling in the not-quite empty vastness of space would be like standing in front of a machine gun going full-on.

Re:Uninhabital new worlds

[Filip22012005]

From Pubmed:

ORL J Otorhinolaryngol Relat Spec. 1995 Jul-Aug;57(4):189-93.
Effect of prolonged hypergravity on the vestibular system: a behavioural study.Sondag HN, de Jong HA, Oosterveld WJ.
Vestibular Department ENT, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Golden hamsters were exposed to conditions of 2.5 times normal gravity (hypergravity, HG) for 4 months. During this period, tests were carried out to study equilibrium maintenance, swimming behaviour and open-field behaviour of these HG hamsters and of control hamsters living in a normal-gravity environment. The tests proved to be useful devices for detecting differences in perceptive-motor behaviour between HG hamsters and control hamsters. The HG hamsters had more difficulties in balancing on tubes and orientation during swimming. In the open-field study, the HG hamsters showed less locomotor activity than control hamsters. However, no differences were observed between the groups in washing, rearing and number of times having defaecation. These findings indicate that the daily transition from 2.5 to 1 g was not experienced as stressful by the hamsters, although performance on several perceptive-motor tasks was decreased, especially during the first weeks.