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Earth-Like Planet That Could Sustain Life Found

Posted by samzenpus on from the guess-who's-coming-to-dinner dept.

astroengine writes "An exoplanet, 20 to 50 percent the mass of Earth, has been discovered 20 light-years away and it appears to have all the ingredients conducive to sustaining life. It has enough gravitational clout to hold onto an atmosphere and it orbits well within the 'Goldilocks Zone' of its parent star. However, it would be a very different place to Earth; it is tidally locked to its star, creating one perpetual day on the world. Interestingly, this may also boost the life-giving qualities of the exoplanet, creating stable temperatures in its atmosphere."

3 of 575 comments (clear)

  1. Summary is wrong. by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 5, Informative

    The summary is incorrect. The exoplanet has "a mass three times larger than Earth's", not 20% to 50%

  2. Re:Humans are so fragile...if only we were hardier by cosm · · Score: 5, Informative

    genetically modify humans to live in a wider variety of environments

    That would never make it through the intergalactic genetic engineering subcommittee. Their chest-pumping and rhetoric would stop it before it hit the hull floor.

    (Posted from the year 2089, see you guys soon! The future is great, but the space-beer is a little watered down.) Yankees win in 66, America is nuked by Eskimos in 70, and 89 is to be the year of the Linux holodeck neural interface.

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
  3. Re:Time dilation woes. by Drishmung · · Score: 5, Informative
    Assuming the vessel had the mass of the space shuttle, at 1g the energy required to do that would be approximately 2,304,558,096 times the Nagasaki A-bomb.

    m = 104,328kg
    a = g = 9.80665ms^-2
    20ly = 1.89E+17m
    Nagasaki A-bomb = 80TJ.

    --
    Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.