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Scientists Discover Exoplanet Less Than Twice the Mass of Earth
Snowblindeye writes with this excerpt from the European Southern Observatory:
"Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor today announced the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, 'e,' in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. Planet Gliese 581 e orbits its host star — located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra ('the Scales') — in just 3.15 days. 'With only 1.9 Earth-masses, it is the least massive exoplanet ever detected and is, very likely, a rocky planet,' says co-author Xavier Bonfils from Grenoble Observatory. Being so close to its host star, the planet is not in the habitable zone. But another planet in this system appears to be. ... The planet furthest out, Gliese 581 d, orbits its host star in 66.8 days. 'Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material, but we can speculate that it is an icy planet that has migrated closer to the star,' says team member Stephane Udry. The new observations have revealed that this planet is in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. '"d" could even be covered by a large and deep ocean — it is the first serious "water world" candidate,' continued Udry."
I always hear about these sorts of discoveries, of new planets more and more similar to earth, but having almost no astronomy background, I have no idea how significant they are.
How much do we really know about these planets, and how much is guessing? How close are these planets, really, to earth?
This is very interesting but no where near as exciting as finding another Earth like planet. I suppose we will have to wait for the next generation of telescopes before we find it though.
What is a little surprising though is how many planetary systems we have found that are very different to our own. I can't believe ours is unique but perhaps it's quite rare.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Gliese 581 d is probably too massive to be made only of rocky material...
Even if it isn't habitable, it might still be large enough to have a habitable moon perhaps?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
"could even be covered by a large and deep ocean â" it is the first serious "water world" candidate" ..
Good.. I wonder if we can export Kevin Costner.
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
Water worlds always have the crappiest minerals. Oh look more alkalines. Yay. It won't be worth spending the fuel to land on Gliese 581 d, much less the cargo hold space. Gliese 581 e might have iron and other metals, but being so close to the star it probably has major hot spots. So that's probably not worth landing on either until we meet the Melnorme and buy some tech off them.
Oh well. Eliminating planets to explore is good too. There's a lot of stars in the sky, you know, and only so much time to explore them before the UrQuan return.
The enemies of Democracy are
Meh.
As in Moonraker, we send the sexy geniuses first, right? Or do we send the Telephone Sanitizers and hairdressers, like in HHGG?
If you would like to know more, download Celestia, an open source project to cruise around the universe in 3D.
:-)
Just select "go to object" and type in "gliese 581", you'll get the orbits of the different planets already found too.
The neat thing is, you can just "cruise" around, speed up time to see how stellar objects move, and so on... Quite cool
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice - Grey's Law
To state banally, once again it appears that Earth isn't the center of the Universe, or even an extraordinary spot. Sadly, mankind won't be ever capable of communicating with such a distant places. However, speculation about extraterrestrial life isn't pointless. In range of our capabilities and, moreover, not forbidden by limiting condition on light speed, is a spectroscopic measurement of atmospheres belonging to planets beyond the solar system. Thus, in principle probable, it would be a great achievement to find traces of organic matter.
Those are some bold statements: 1) Considering how many planets we have looked at and that we can't find life on any of them this makes Earth very extraordinary.
2) Not ever be able to communicate with distant places? You don't know what we will invent in the future. It may come out tomorrow, or it may come out in 300 years - but to say "never".
3) Speculation about other life is not pointless - it feeds our soul and imagination to wonder if there is something else. If humans thought exploring was pointless we would still be living in Africa, definitely never have crossed the ocean, let alone landed on the moon (something that people, 100 years ago, thought was impossible)
Finding organic material will be hard short of landing on the surface. We couldn't even do searches of Mars without sending a robotic device there, and even then it may miss something. It's hard, and may not get done in our lifetime (thought it might) but it is certainly not pointless or impossible, and considering how rare life is we should consider ourselves (and our planet) to be very rare and special, though hopefully not unique.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
On the tinyurl site you can choose to have a preview page that shows you the actual url when you click on one of their link (storing the preference as a cookie iirc).
You just got troll'd!
Finding organic living matter on other planets would be fantastic, but unfortunately that wont be the first kind of extra-terrestrial life we find (prospective there is any).
Our most advanced instruments are just now able to detect exoplanets, and soon enough they may be able to actually scan the surface for signs of life.
If we COULD send instruments there that could detect microscopic living organisms, we might actually have a lot better luck at finding life.
This just isnt feasible currently, and were going to have to stick with superficial surface scanning for creatures crawling around until we can actually send instruments there that could report back.
If we did find intelligent life, I think it would be a good idea to send a rocket with a screen and dvd player or something, with a big red button on it that plays it. Imagine being on Earth 200 years ago and finding something similar, with videos of aliens and things.
It would have been revolutionary, and eventually we may be able to greet another intelligent race in a similar fashion.
Oh the possibilities..
The science of extra-solar planet detection is very interesting, but speculation about surface conditions that might exist doesn't reflect the science at all, it's just fodder for the media and bloggers.
The only things we know are extremely rough estimates of orbital parameters and mass, although the host star is well characterised. The speculation is conjuring up quite specific images in people's minds, and while fun, they're not justified. It's leading people without an astronomy background astray.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
So, is it an M-Class planet or not?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
1) Considering how many planets we have looked at and that we can't find life on any of them this makes Earth very extraordinary.
The only reason we are able to detect life on Earth is due to proximity - so you're just as guilty of jumping to conclusions as the GP. We've found planets that differ wildly from Earth because the easiest planets to detect are the fuck-all-huge ones. Just because we haven't observed Earth-like planets yet does not mean they aren't all over the bloody place. They're just rather hard to spot with current technologies.
It's a red dwarf, not a white dwarf. Red dwarfs could be thought of as small low-energy stars. They're more numerous and last longer than Sun-like stars. It's a gimme -- because it's nearby, less massive, and produces less light, it's easier to see stuff around it.
I think it would be a good idea to send a rocket with a screen and dvd player or something, with a big red button on it that plays it.
Yeah, because if a big thing from another planet lands and I look inside and see a big red button attached to some unknown device, I'm gonna just press that puppy right away :-)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Or you can use this extension https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9549
You just got troll'd!
If we do an absorption spectrum reading of the atmosphere, which can be done at astronomical distances, and find free oxygen that would be a strong evidence for life on that planet. Oxygen is so reactive that it wouldn't exist very long in a planet's atmosphere before combining with something, unless here is a process like life to replenish it.
The star is about 20 light years away. That's a 20-year round trip for radio communications,
40 years round trip. That's a long time to wait for a response. Imagine we sent out a message announcing our presence and saying hello:
"Hello? This is humanity, we are [blah, blah - lots of info about us and Earth]..." ..... .....
40 years later and you get the response:
"Hi!"
How pissed would you be?
The Dave Lister count is also much Higher for Red Dwarves.
Actually, it would be much wiser to simply continue to talk for the whole twenty years than dialog like that. You would give the recipient a lot of information over that time, and hopefully they would reciprocate.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
That's a 20-year round trip for radio communications, sure... but we are currently capable of communicating with "such a distant places" (sic). We have been for the better part of a half a century.
Radio communication was invented in 1960?
653899 - Another prime Slashdot UID
No. The correct term is lightest. The writers are not making any indication about density in the summary. They are indicating they they have indeed found the lightest planet discovered using these techniques. This planet wouldn't even be close to being the least dense planet ever discovered. Gas giants are typically far less dense.
(having to wait my obligatory five minutes between posts)
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
You wouldn't but I would, then I'd lick the casing. My dog might even widdle on the side of the probe or hump one of its legs.
I'm pretty sure one constant throughout the universe will be that life invariably leads to unbelievable stupidity.
How often does she call you DJCouchyCouch?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Imagine we sent out a message announcing our presence and saying hello:
"Hello? This is humanity, we are [blah, blah - lots of info about us and Earth]..." ..... .....
40 years later and you get the response:
"Hi!"
How pissed would you be?
Not as pissed as I would be if the response was a message telling us how our civilization could grow larger, last longer, and bring more pleasure to our partners.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Actually, wouldn't the correct term be 'least massive'? Heavy and light are measurements of weight generally and are pretty meaningless for objects that are in orbit. Unless it's considered kosher to use lightest/heaviest in this situation, sometimes I think English drifts faster than the average person can keep up with it.
I think a lot of people would freak the fuck out if we sent them a bunch of information in English and they sent their responses in English.
I'd expect that any response would sound like static or gibberish, and we might not be able to decode it for a long time. As cheesy as some parts of "Contact" were, that part was probably about right: We receive their "message" and then spend months going, "WTF did they send us?"
.
it's going to take a long time (both in ramping up the tech and in tasking the scope to just sit there and stare at a star, waiting for something to blip by) for the "earth-sized rock in the habitable zone with an earth-length orbital period!" announcements to start rolling in.
I wouldn't think that an "earth-length" orbital period is all that important to determining if a planet can support life or not. Remember, the type of the star it orbits determines where and how large the habitable zone will be, so if we find a planet relatively the same size as Earth orbiting a star that is not as hot as our sun, the habitable zone for this planet will be much closer to the star in question; thus the orbital period could possibly be much different than our own, depending on exactly how close that planet must be in order to sustain liquid water. Likewise, if an earth sized planet is found orbiting a star that burns much hotter than our sun, the habitable zone would be much farther away from that particular star, again resulting in a different orbital period from our own.