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Gliese 581d Confirmed as 'Habitable' Exoplanet
An anonymous reader writes "A rocky world orbiting a nearby star was confirmed (PDF) as the first planet outside our Solar System to meet key requirements for sustaining life." The "key requirement" was actually a Starbucks — astronomers were pretty surprised to find out that they like their coffee burnt on Gliese 581d too.
From TFA:
However, humanity has already tried to make contact with the new planet. During Australia's National Science Week in August 2009, Cosmos magazine partnered with the Australian government, NASA and the CSIRO to run a 13-day campaign to collect goodwill messages from the public to be sent to Gliese 581d.
The initiative, known as Hello From Earth, collected 26,000 messages, which were transmitted by NASA's Tidbinbilla facility. The signal is not due to arrive until January 2030.
At which time it will be returned because we failed to include sufficient postage.
Since it's within the Goldilocks zone, I'm guessing that the Starbucks serves oatmeal not too hot, and not too cold.
Get off my launchpad!
The importance of this isn't that we can now send a team to colonize it. The importance of this is that we now have actual evidence that there are other planets that are theoretically habitable (Gliese581d doesn't sound like a good vacation spot, but it sounds comparable to some parts of Siberia or Antartica). We just one of the lower bounds in the Drake Equation.
Given that there are very scientifically sound and obvious limitations on chemical processes involved in known or postulated life, that doesn't seem to outrageously presumptuous.
300,000 years would be longer than there have been anatomically modern humans on Earth. If we make it, by the time we get there, we'll be a whole new species.
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Here is something that may interest you. This is a time-lapse video of asteroids discoveries. You'll notice the amount and distance increasing considerably as we reach the present. This shows the difference between technologies 20 years ago and the current ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw
According to TFA it looks to be habitable in principle (using Earth-centric assumptions about complex life, of course) but toxic to humans, so perhaps not a prime candidate for humanity's first extrasolar excursion.
It should get better. The Doppler planets and early Kepler results are biased toward extreme planets. By 3rd year Kepler should be seeing 1 A.U. planets.
Sir,
We do not even have a self-sustaining colony on Antarctica, which is warmer than mars, and has unlimited air and water. Our colonies on Antarctica are nowhere near self-sustaining. Mars is colder than Antarctica, water is scarce, and there's NO oxygen and barely any atmosphere.
In other words, calling Mars "habitable" is like calling rocks "edible". The rocks might become edible if you ground them down to dust, added plants, and then ate the plants.
--PeterM
Antarctica is not a good comparison. The reason why we do not have a self-sustaining colony there is not primarily technical, but rather economical. It is way simpler to fly in supplies to the few research stations we have there than to setup a whole economy there. Technically - set up a nuclear reactor, use waste heat to heat some greenhouses and off you go.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
You won't find oxygen in an atmosphere without life already on the planet. Oxygen is too reactive.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Well, NOW it's known.
Actually, now it is MODELED. Given that we have no direct experience with planets like this, none of the models can be directly verified, and the authors had to invent a new model just to reach their conclusion, I think it is poor scientific practice to say that is it "confirmed" to be habitable. Instead, it is confirmed that there is a possible path by which it could be habitable, but that just doesn't have the same zing to it, so instead we make wild assertions and let the sci-fi geeks salivate over what amounts to a plausible, but completely unproven, explanation for how things work. While we're at it, I have this model for how the universe was created. We have no way to verify it, but it is at least plausible. I guess we should just call it confirmed and shout down anyone who objects as unscientific.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
I fear we may have only 40 years left before the invasion fleet (or planet busters) arrive.
Don't you people read any (bad?) science fiction? One solution to the "Fermi Paradox" is that there ARE aliens but they are definitely NOT friendly. Once they detect another civilization they move to wipe it out. In fact maybe they do so out of prudence thinking that if they don't, the new civilization will wipe THEM out! Sort of like an intergalactic version of the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) policy that STILL underpins the basic relationship between the superpowers.
In fact the first civilization to think this way doesn't even need to be around anymore Just start making some self replicating probes and within a very short (geologically speaking) period of time the entire galaxy will be filled with automated systems capable of snuffing out a fledgling civilization (us). (This is the plot of Greg Bear's "The Forge of God"). So instead of telling everyone "We're here, we're here!", we should be as quiet as possible like a lamb all alone in the deep dark woods filled with wolves. I didn't mind the Arecibo transmission sent out in the 70s (and used as the plot device for the movie "Species") because it was aimed at one of the Magellanic clouds; hundreds of thousands of light years away. But Gliese 581? Cosmically speaking, that isn't just next door it's on our door mat!
So great an intellect as Stephen Hawkings has expressed his concern on this so it bears thinking about! Anyway, it's too late now so let's hope that if anyone's there it's E.T. or the Vulcans rather than Predators or Aliens!
Violence is the only basis for property and civilization. There's always someone who will take or destory everything you value, just for the fun of doing so, without the threat of violence to deter them. Those "native" Americans whose land we "stole"? Yeah, they took it from the less violent previous owners, for the most part. That's just how it works - man up, buttercup.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's preposterous to state that human evolution is over. Here's a short list of evolutionary changes from just the last 10,000 years:
* Blue, green, and gray eye variants
* Ability to process lactose as adults
* Ability to process high-starch diets without developing diabetes (the prevalence of which is much lower in populations with older histories of farming)
* Wider variety of skin tones
* Differently shaped and sized teeth and skulls from the past
And those are just surface traits that are easy to see/detect in everyday life.
More info here: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/09-they-dont-make-homo-sapiens-like-they-used-to
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Evolution works with thousands and millions of years, and thousands of generations.
Not decades. And 50 years is barely enough for 2 generations.
Heck... Knock it down to the bare physical/physiological minimum (lower mark of the puberty age for girls) and even then it is only 5 generations.
Only FIVE generations. IF we accept the "eleven-year-old mother with two point five kids" option.
Rats reach five generations in about 11 months. That's 100 generations about every 18 years. Seen many rats evolve into another species during your life?
It would take about 2500 years for humans to reach even those 100 generations. And guess what? NOTHING WOULD CHANGE!
Oh... you might BREED a slightly different subset of the species in that time - but not evolve it.
Let it go for a generation or two and all those traits you tried so hard to breed out would rear their ugly head once again.
Oh and BTW... IQ has actually been going up over the last century or so.
And most of it on the "dumber" side of the scale.
In the future, try not to give too much credit to "science" you pick up from Hollywood comedies.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You are assuming without lack of new stimuli in the closed environment of a space craft that humans would still evolve
Right, because completely changing virtually every aspect of the environment by locking a small number of humans in a closed, artificially-maintained ecosystem for generations won't introduce any additional selective pressure of any kind whatsoever. And you're forgetting the role of sexual selection in driving evolution independently of external environmental change.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Are you familiar with the Biosphere 2 experiment? They attempted to set up an enclosed self-sustaining environment...
...and ignored all the most important advice from their scientific advisors, particularly with regard to soil bacteria, instead doing what "felt right", which was directly responsible for the disastrous results.
Biosphere 2 was an experiment that asked the question, "Can humans who ignore facts and empirically established relationships between environmental factors but instead trust their intuition and feelings create a closed, stable, habitable environment."
The answer was... and I'm sure everyone here will be shocked by this... "No."
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The 700 Club is already building a spaceship so a Missionary can be started there.