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Extrasolar Planet Could Harbor Life

Posted by Zonk on from the hello-up-there dept.

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."

12 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Oh my god, it's full of dupes. by ColonelPanic · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  2. The best neighbors... by Chysn · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...are the ones you can't see even with a telescope.

    --
    --I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
    -- See?
  3. The trouble is by zappepcs · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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." emphasis mine

    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
    1. Re:The trouble is by hubie · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think you need to recheck some of your facts.

      Our solar system moves in and out of the spiral arms as well as up and down through the galactic plane. We go through the galactic plane about every 35 million years, and through the spiral arms about every 100 million years. Some postulate that these timescales coincide with various mass extinctions that occurred.

      The axial tilt of the Earth changes all the time. The tilt angle varies between 22 and 25 degrees over a period of about 41000 years. There is also precession of the orbit that happens on a 22000 year timescale. The changing tilt angle changes the severity of the seasons (length of seasons, ice ages, etc.), but it doesn't have anything to say about whether the planet could harbor life.

      There isn't anything magical about our molten core and magnetosphere. We usually expect large rocky planets to have them, so we find it unusual if a planet doesn't have a magnetosphere.

      I wouldn't say that the asteroid belt has protected us. The asteroid belt is basically a planet that either didn't form, or didn't survive. Its existence is probably one of the biggest threats to our survival on this planet. It is a race to see whether a large asteroid or comet hits our planet and wipes us out. Nobody doubts that it will happen again in the future; we just don't know when it will.

      The Moon actually causes a drag on the planet that is slowing down the Earth rotation. I don't recall hearing what an ideal rotation rate for the Earth is to sustain life.

      Once one gets their head around how many stars there are in just our own galaxy, many people consider it a given that there is life all around in the galaxy. Even if you take the most pessimistic odds for life to develop, once you multiply that by the number of stars out there it would seem to be very likely. The most famous statement of this is the Drake Equation. Of course, once you consider the extremely large distances between any two stars it is easy to come to the conclusion that all this life will not come in contact with each other (the intelligent life, that is).

  4. Space/Genetic Exploration by spentmiles · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Space/Genetic Exploration by RsG · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not terribly likely that alien pathogens could harm us. Remember that most plain old fashioned terrestrial diseases are only able to infect a limited variety of hosts. HIV originated in chimps (our closest living evolutionary relatives), rabies is limited to mammals, the flu (which is versatile by viral standards) is primarily limited to mammals and birds, etc. Even diseases like malaria which spend parts of their life cycle in very different hosts (us and mosquitoes) are fairly specialized.

      Try and imagine dutch elm disease making the transition from trees to humans. Then remember that both host organisms are terrestrial - we're more closely related to trees than we would be to any alien. It's not totally impossible that some alien bacteria could, by some chance, find the human body hospitable (or vice versa), but it isn't very probable.

      Plus, the human immune system has a habit of attacking anything remotely foreign. That's why you get problems like allergies and organ rejection. If an alien organism is enough like us to pose an infection risk, then it's also most likely similar enough to trigger an immune response. And the diseases that we face today have had millions of years of evolution to prepare them for our immune system, whereas anything alien has not. So even if life elsewhere is very much like life here, it'll have the same catching up to do that we will. Admittedly pathogens evolve faster than their hosts, but then again these hosts have medical technology to make up the difference.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  5. Needless hype: good publicity or bad conditioning? by dtolman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  6. Might be hell to live on... by jhsiao · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Complete and Utter Failure by Rauser · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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
  8. Re:Quick... by PixelScuba · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

  9. uh-oh by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Funny

    God help those poor bastards if they've got oil.

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  10. Anthropomorphize much? by zoips · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.