Potential 'Avatar' Gas Giant Exoplanet Discovered

Luminary Crush writes "A gas giant of approximately 1.5 Mj (Jupiter Mass) was discovered on October 22nd around the binary star system HD 176051B. It's not known with certainty which component of the binary system the planet is in orbit around at this point as both stars in HD 176051B are relatively Sol-sized (1.07 and .71 solar masses). Named 176051B b, this new exoplanet orbits within the star system's habitable zone, and if mapped onto our solar system with relative distance from our Sun it would place the large planet between Earth and Mars. While it's unlikely that such a gas giant could host life as we know it (though it's hypothesized), the location of the big planet opens up the intriguing idea of the realization of some of science fiction's famously habitable moons, Pandora and Endor. Look no further than our own solar system to see moons with the potential ingredients for life — just add heat."

Comments

Trying to find other habitable planets is futile..

[mark-t]

This post is probably going to get modded as a troll... it's certanly got all the earmarks of it, but all I can say is that this is still my sincere belief on the matter. I see absolutely no point to the exercise to finding habitable exoplanets. At all.

What good does it do to know that habitable exoplanets are out there? Can we send people there? And even if we did, in the enormous time that it takes them to reach their destination, would the descendants of the original crew even be the sort of people who might actually want to engage in such a mission? What if, when they get there, they find out it's a bust? We've sentenced generations of people to death in the blacknesss of space, with absolutely *NO* means of ever getting back within their lifetime. We could hypothetically also just send a probe, but again, the sheer magnitude of time that would elapse before a probe actually reached the destination could make it unlikely that any people are actually still listening for the probe to send back any data.

As I see it, scouting around the galaxy for exoplanets that can possibly host life when we don't have the technology to send anything there within a time frame that is reasonable for the purposes of what would have to be just an experiment, is one of the hugest wastes of time and resources that I can imagine.

Now I've heard the arguments that living only on this planet, we *do* have all of our eggs in one basket, and it wouldn't take very much to wipe us out. These arguments are not wholly lost on me, but I can't see sending people to a place so far away that meaningful communication is not just impossible because of limitations on technology, but impossible because of physical constraints on the operation of the universe itself, is going to help matters... the time scales involved are so insanely large that it's unlikely in the extreme that anyone on earth around the time of its predicted arrival would even know or care if the vessel actually reached its destination at the scheduled time. We could not have any comfort that we might endure beyond a global catastrophe because there would be no way to ever know. That said, of course... it's not impossible for people to receive comfort from believing in things that aren't necessarily true, but that's not very scientifically valid is it? It's hardly any sort of real solution to the problem that we are likely to all be wiped out if we stay here when we subject parts of our population to even greater risks just by propelling them off this rock at the greatest velocities that are physically achievable by technology that we have with not even the slightest hope of ever returning.

Now that said, if we could find a way to extend productive and healthy human life to be at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than how long we have it currently, well then, sending people to other stars might become a viable thing to do. Or, even more unlikely (IMO), if we find a way to break the speed limit that the universe has imposed on absolutely every single thing that exists, then I could see finding habitable exoplanets possibly being something of promise... and of hope. Until then, however, I'm afraid I really just don't see the point.

Okay... I'm done. Mod away.