Nearby Solar System Looks Like Home

sciencehabit writes "Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star just 21 light-years from Earth that boasts a number of planets. Now astronomers are reporting another feature that earthlings would find familiar: a ring of dust far from the star which resembles the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, a zone of objects, each much smaller than Earth, that lies beyond Neptune's orbit and includes Pluto. The newfound debris disk is about as large as the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, even though Gliese 581 is small and all of its known planets lie closer to their sun than Earth does to ours. The scientists speculate that the little red star harbors a more remote planet whose gravity stirs up the belt's small objects, causing them to collide and spew the dust that Herschel has discerned."

Comments

Spoiler:

[Kotoku]

The summary is the whole article. Also, not that much like us.

Re:Less Speculation, Please

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see speculation anywhere in the scientific method.

You don't? Perhaps you should reflect on the meaning of the word "hypothesis."

Re:Despite all the complaining...

[AlecC]

I agree. When I considered the Drake Equation, I always used to put a much lower value than most on the term expressing the probability of planets in a solar system. I was wrong: it looks as if planets are plentiful, and therefore habitable planets more plentiful than I had thought,

The best replacement I have to solve the Fermi paradox is the possibility that the step from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life is very hard, as some biologist suggest,