Slashdot Mirror
Extrasolar Planet Could Harbor Life
BlueMorpho writes with a link to a Space.com article about a recently discovered extrasolar planet that may be able to harbor 'life as we know it.' Orbiting around the star Gliese 581 is a small rocky ball that might have the same liquid ocean and drifting continent configuration we're familiar with. The find may be unique in all of space exploration as this planet appears to be within a habitable band of temperatures for life, and is categorically not a gas giant. "The bottom line is exciting ...The conditions for life could be there, but is life itself? As yet, there's no way to know unless the planet has spawned beings that are at least as clever as we are. As part of the SETI Institute's Project Phoenix, we twice aimed large antennas in the direction of Gliese 581, hoping to pick up a signal that would bespeak technology ... Neither search turned up a signal."
This is categorically amazing! Gliese 581 has not one, but *two* planets capable of sustaining life as we know it!
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
...are the ones you can't see even with a telescope.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
The trouble is that despite the planet's title sounding like a science fiction title, the former residents of Gliese 581 were at least as clever as we are, and the planet is currently recovering from a complete nuclear winter...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I wonder what we'll find fist: a) A planet as inhabitable by us as Earth. b) A way to genetically modify humans to adapt to currently inhospitable conditions. Maybe we'll be able to breath sulfurous air, like that found on XJ93832, which is otherwise a resort planet. I've been doing my own experiments with a homemade dutch oven. My subject/wife is quite an innovator. I think she's been altered at the genetic level several times.
hey kids! Exciting news a planet could have life - assuming it has an atmosphere. And if it does have that atmosphere, it doesn't overheat the planet through greenhouse heating. And oh yeah, all we know about it is its orbit and mass. And it almost definitely doesn't have life. Aren't you excited?
When the media flogs "science" stories like this, full of marginal ideas that probably aren't true are we just conditioning the public to ignore actual science as pie in the sky crap? Or does the break from Paris Hilton news stories have some tangible benefit to educating society at large?
Because tiny microbes living in the soil always emit "signals". Technologically advanced life vs. life are two very different things. Jetson's like colonies would be nice to find, but honestly, we are more likely to find single cell organisms who haven't quite figured out how to build a radio tower.
The planet is so close to the star that it's likely tidally locked so that only one side faces the sun and the other side is in eternal night. The temperature differential between the hot day side and the cold night side might cause the border to be under constant storm activity.
A "year" where the planet rotates around the star is only 13 days. If tidally locked, a "day" is the same amount of time.
The same tidal forces would also make any large oceans on the surface prone to immense tides. The strong tides may also result in more tectonic activity than on Earth.
"We twice aimed large antennas in the direction of Gliese 581, hoping to pick up a signal that would bespeak technology"
The first interspace wardriving attempt thus ended in failure. The Gliesians must be hardwired.
The white zone is for loading and unloading only. If you need to load or unload go to the white zone. It's a way of life
A planet of Earthlike mass in the habitable band would almost certainly have to have an atmosphere of some kind. Whether or not that atmosphere is breathable or not is another question altogether. From that distance, Venus or Mars would look pretty good to extraterrestial terran planet hunters. Masswise Venus is a near twin of earth but the surface conditions are straight out of Dante's Inferno. Mars is a shade too light to hold on to a thick O2 atmosphere and is basically a cold rusty desert. My guess is this place is apt to be more like Venus or Mars than Earth. Any chance we could talk Goldilocks into planet hunting?
This is easily the most exciting time period in the history of astronomy (to date). New discoveries of real interest (even to nonexperts) are being made monthly. What a marvelous time to be living!
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
And now... Deep Thoughts ...by Jack Handey.
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
Sure, the hum-drum science of everyday research is important... but so too are the stories that inspire us.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
God help those poor bastards if they've got oil.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
No wonder SETI could not get any signal from them. They learnt their lessons. Last time they visited us on the Independance Day we uploaded a virus into their system. So they just set their modem "To ignore pings from the WAN side."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
At 10.8 miles/s -- the current speed of Voyager 1, 373,000 years (I rounded -- alot).
If we can jack that up to .25c (a considerable feat), it falls to 80 years, but the crew will only age 79 years or so.
Now, if we double that to .5c (a damn-near impossible feat), it becomes 40 years, with the crew only age 36 years, provided they don't become goo from the massive g force they will feel getting up to .5c.
Gliese 581 is, as astronomical distances go, relatively close: only 20 light-years away. It's one of the few star systems which, if inhabited, might provoke conversation. A simple exchange, along the lines of "how are you?" followed by "fine, and you?" would require a mere four decades. Tedious, but not unthinkable.
The actual exchange...
EARTH: How are you?
GLIESE 581: Sorry, we don't need Viagra. You can try the next planet over.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but Gliese 581 is an M-class dwarf. There's serious concerns about the habitability this entire class of star. They have large magnetic fields and are subject to very large solar flares which could exterminate life within their solar system. More details available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_dwarf#Habitability
The real question about supporting life is not only breathable air, but also the surrounding belts that insulate a planet from intense radiation. Ozone layer, Van Allen Belts, and the like are just as - if not more important - than a breathable atmosphere.
PLUS planet tilt.
And distance.
And possibly rotation speed.
I'm not saying that life exists anywhere else...just that the odds are against it. Maybe.
"i could care less about aliens, i really couldn't. "
Ok, which is it? could you care less, or could you not care less?
Viruses are DNA specific, most can't even swap between species on Earth.
Bacteria are slightly worse. The ones that cause us trouble tend to be highly specialized, which of course wouldn't be a problem on another planet. But there are also generalist. Most likely, our natural defense would have no trouble with those, but we could be unlucky.
The defense is also the largest problem, we would not be a good food source for the native life, but neither would the native life provide the necessary nutrients for us. We would at least need a supplement of Earth based life forms. And the Earth based life forms would be unlikely to be able to compete with the native life forms, so a sustainable colony would be a challenge.
Well, I'm pretty sure the little green men will do one of the following:
a) Disable our colony ships main computer with a computer virus written quickly by one of their hacker geniuses and then hit it with a nuclear warhead while our colonists are waiting for Windows to boot up again.
b) Find out that a very common, harmless (to them) substance on their planet is highly toxic to us humans and douse any unwelcome visitor with it.
c) Realize that their equivalent of the common cold is a deadly plague for humans.
d) Send in the little green men in black to take care of the human invasion, then mind-wipe any innocent bystanders.
e) Travel back in time and keep Earth from forming.
If they're anything like us, they may have detected us about 35 years ago, but cut funding on the transmitter to build interstellar nukes. Cause yuo know, there's only one way to be sure.
If they are really clever, why would they watch our TV?
AccountKiller
That means we'll have to go there twice?
Dammit. I've only got one FTL drive, and it took me a good twenty-five years of watching Star Trek to build that one!
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
It'd be cool if someone would come up with a more interesting argument than we're perfect, everything here is perfect, so it's the only way to go. It's a good logical starting point, go with what you know, but claiming that life on Earth is the only way to go because that's how it works here is, well, basically begging the question, and last I heard, logical fallacies are bad.
SETI is looking for a ridiculously-strong, directed signal. Basically someone would have to have a transmitter with unheard-of wattage pointed right at the earth for us to detect it with the Aracaibo telescope.
Basically, if the Aracaibo telescope were on Gliese and were pointed at Earth, it wouldn't detect us. Until the SETI project gets a better telescope, the fact that we didn't detect anything coming from Gliese when we pointed one of our ground-based radio telescopes at it only means they aren't stupid enough to spend a billion dollars to build a 20MW directional transmitter, point it right at the earth, and leave it blasting for thousands of years hoping we'd give a listen.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
You won't believe this but...
In 2001 a polish nun call Sister Faustina, who had died in 1939 I think, was made a saint (canonized). As far as I know canonization is an infallible statement that the person went to heaven and led a life of exceptional saintliness.
In her diaries (which she was instructed to keep by her superiours) Jesus Christ appears numerous times. At one point he says that the universe is teeming with life, and it would be arrogant of us to think that it is only our planet that had life, or words to that effect.
Now because she is canonized that effectively means that the content of her diaries, while not themselves being proclaimed infallible, are approved of nevertheless.
The diaries also claim that Hitler was not the Anti-Christ, and that the Anti-Christ was already living. I would bet on Stalin.
As a result of this nun and her visions of Christ the Catholic Church instituted the Feast Of the Divine Mercy on the sunday after Easter sunday. Apparently if we don't ask God for His mercy we must eventually glorify His justice instead (ie. eternal punishment). And that message was the purpose of Jesus's appearances. Google for "Saint Faustina" for more info.
Thats theft of service! The MPAA and FCC would be all over them! :)
Can all fish swim?
There's serious concerns about the habitability this entire class of star. They have large magnetic fields and are subject to very large solar flares which could exterminate life within their solar system.
Being that the planet is larger than Earth, the hope would be that it has a thicker atmosphere to help shield from magnetic storms. Any life may also be adapted to take cover during flair-ups.
Actually, I saw a computer-generated show on I think Discovery channel about just such a world. They figured a tidally-locked earth-like planet would have a permananent red-spot-like storm on it's star-facing side.
Table-ized A.I.
Earthlike mass implies Earthlike gravity. A planet with a gravity well of that intensity at the range of temperatures encountered in the "habitable band" will hold on to most of the gases that accompany its formation as well as being able to capture some of the gases it enounters as it orbits (which will pile up a bit over the eons) as well as some fraction of ejecta from asteroid and comet hits. Note well, I didn't specify what sort of atmosphere. In the absence of life as we know it, we're talking things like CO2, N2, Methane, and whole other slew of things with similar molecular weights.
Look at our own solar system. Mars and Venus and a whole slew of gas giant moons have atmospheres. Given the gravity and energy input from it's star, you really have to stand this on it's head. You'd have to justify why it wouldn't have an atmosphere.
My argument against this line of reasoning is always the same.
Sure, space aliens from planet X that came to visit us would have to be be way more advanced than us. Sure they could wipe us out in a heartbeat.
But, why would they bother?
Why would a race so far advanced, bother to travel so far just to wipe ot some inconsequential race? There is nothing we would have that they would want. Any resources available on Earth they would be able to harvest from any number of other places closer and more convenient given their technology.
It would be like you traveling from the US to Hong Kong to squash an annoying moth. Sure you *can* do it but why on earth would you ever bother? If you are going on such a trip it is far more likely that you are a scientist going to STUDY the moth than it is that you are going to kill it for no reason.