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3 Habitable-Zone Super-Earths Found Orbiting Nearby Star
astroengine writes "Gliese 667C is a well-studied star lying only 22 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius, but it appears to have been hiding a pretty significant secret. The star has at least six exoplanets in orbit, three of which orbit within the star's "habitable zone" — the region surrounding a star that's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on their surfaces. Astronomers already knew that Gliese 667C had three worlds in orbit, one in the star's habitable zone, but the finding of three more exoplanets, two of which are also in the habitable zone is a huge discovery. Finding one small planet in a star's habitable zone is exciting, but finding three is historic. 'The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star — instead of looking at ten stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and find several of them,' said Rory Barnes, of the University of Washington, co-author of the study, in an ESO press release Tuesday (June 25)."
I'd like to get more information about these worlds before I die. Also, I'd like to know if I would really get my own planet if I went "Full Mormon" so I can prepare accordingly.
That's funny as hell...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
22 light-years from Earth means that we can't really consider moving there...
Me full Mormon planet too, lol.
I'm still waiting for us to find the five-star system from Firefly. We could use dozens of plants and hundreds of moons to terraform.
I think I will be avoiding the peacekeepers thanks.
'The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star — instead of looking at ten stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and find several of them,' said Rory Barnes, of the University of Washington, co-author of the study
While seemingly true, this statement is misleading. Having found 3 habitable planets around a single star, it does not follow that all stars have 3 habitable planets. Or even that any other star has 3 habitable planets. I really hope this was just a statement made out of context...otherwise...it just makes me sad.
There are many exoplanet claims with both the transit method and the Doppler method. What I'd like to see is use them in the same systems to see whether they yield the same results. Right now, these are only predictions, not discoveries, and they are hard to verify.
One problem that has not be determined is how do planets deal with the inherent variability with Red Dwarf stars. There are many, many more red dwarfs than other types of stars and their expected life expectancy is longer the estimated end of the universe. But their small nature makes their energy output more variable than a star like our sun.
Does the long life, and greater number of Red Dwarfs significantly boost the drake equation? Does the variable energy output reduce the drake equation?
Unfortunately, we will all probably be long dead before we find out.
It took us 200 years to increase normal-ish transport speeds from 5mph to 500mph. (Though bulk transport is still more like 30mph.)
We've got a LOT of technology to develop if we want to increase normal-ish transport speeds from 500mph to 1/2 light speed.
It's just about a million times faster than current tech. Even if you assume we get 100x speedup every 200 years, that's another 600 years of tech, though of course I concede that development doesn't need to be 100x every 200 years.
Making this even worse is the fact that energy required (nonrelativistic) goes as v^2. So we need ~10^12 as much energy to move stuff at 1/2 light speed (actually worse due to the relativistic factor.)
Your confidence in technology is nice, but I for one find the numbers involved downright sobering.
--PM
I'm a BIG, HUGE fan of all things space-related, but researching to find Earth-like inhabitable planets is only a political speech away from greenlighting all types of environmentally-destructive economic activities, since "we'll all move off this rock someday anyway."
There's plenty of data both pro and con about sending a probe to explore and the timeline necessary. Has anyone ever thought about seeing if perhaps another race has sent a probe at us? And if so, how would we spot it?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I'm not sure what difference this makes to the actual habitability of the planets, but all of these are tidally locked. That is, the same part of the planet is always facing the star (and thus baked) while the same part faces empty space (and thus freezes). A thick atmosphere might transport heat and make things more uniform, but none of these are what one would naively think of as "habitable". In fact, all planets in the "habitable" zone of such small stars are going to be tidally locked. Wikipedia actually has a nice summary of the problem of tidal locking in small stars.
On the other hand, they might have very interesting moons.
and its sister stars are only 4 LY away. One would think we'd have gone over them with a fine tooth comb and all we've found is 1 molten hell hole around Cb. Why? Wouldn't even a smallish planet be a lot more visible around AC, Cb, or pC than some galaxy 13.6 billion LY away?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I feel like this submission title has greatly lowered the bar for "habitable."
We're finding enough potentially habitable exoplanets that it's worth sending messages to them. Some might have a civilization. It's time for SETI to start transmitting.
This is quite possible. Arecebo could communicate with a similar installation across the galaxy.
I'm excited about the news of habitable planets being more common-place in our galaxy (and probably the universe) than previously thought. The thing is, WHEN are you people going to stop this big bang and evolution nonsense ? Every time scientists discover that the potential for life is greater in greater, you do realize that they're also proving that creationism is more and more likely than evolution. The reason is that, the more habitable planets that exist, the more I question WHY we haven't seen any visitors yet or seen any evidence of their existence? We can't get to them but, if our universe is most likely teaming with life, I would think we would have made contact by now.
The reality is that God created life ON EARTH.
Given that the only solar system we have even partially explored has at least one potentially habitable planet, why is the constant assumption made that te vast majority of other systems are entirely uninhabitable? Are we really THAT arrogant to think our system is so unique? Based on the evidence in our sample size of one, surely the logical assumption would be that there are plenty of other similar systems?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
For every habitable but uninhabited planet we find, the human race becomes more and more special. I don't want to be that special kid...
if you accelerate constantly a 1g for 11 light years and then decelerate at 1g fo 11 light years it takes 9 years to get there in your rest frame. in earth frame time this is much longer so you cant just come back in 18 earth years, but you can come back in 18 of your own.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Moving from subsonic to supersonic speeds, the efficiency of wings, falls by more than a half. The energy efficiency of thrust also falls by more than a half from high subsonic turbofans, to mach 2 turbojets. The Concorde gets ~17 seat miles per gallon. A modern airliner get ~75 seat miles per gallon. Fuel consumption also effects range. So, there is a reason the United States does not have any supersonic bombers. Fuel costs might go higher in the future, and there is talk of modern turboprop airplanes that travel ~400 mph, with higher fuel efficiency.
Big planets would likely as not be volcanic hell-holes with crushing atmospheres due to greater gravity.
With a round-trip-time of at least 2x22a to, lets say a rover, you really have to resort to mosh in oder to ssh into that box.
OK, so I gave a crude, nonrelativistic calculation of how much energy increase would be required to accelerate from 500mph to 1/2 the speed of light.
I came up with a number, based on the nonrelativistic equation "E=1/2 m * v^2" and added the remark that my estimate was off because of my neglect of relativity.
I explicitly deny that "goes up v^2 because of friction" is true. Furthermore, the relativistic equation isn't even that hard. Let's start with this:
E_kinetic = m * (gamma-1) * c^2 where
gamma = 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
For 1/2 speed of light, (gamma-1) = 0.1547.
For 500mph, (gamma-1) = 2.78 x 10^-13.
To compare the two, note that
E_kinetic(1/2 c) / E_kinetic(500mph) = (.1547/2.78x 10^-13)
which yields an energy ratio of 5.56 x 10^11.
So to increase "normal" transport speeds from 500mph to 1/2c, we only need to use 556 billion times more energy.
--PM
Well there are inhabital planets we can use if we screw up ours. Thats good and all but how do we get there? 22 light years is a long way. We'd need a faster than light speed meens of travel or a neer light speed travel and advance cryopreservation technology.
Well there are inhabital planets we can use if we screw up ours. Thats good and all but how do we get there? 22 light years is a long way. We'd need a faster than light speed meens of travel or a neer light speed travel and advance cryopreservation technology.
Well, I must say I'm really grateful to you for the perfect demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
This is it:
From Wikipedia, "The Dunningâ"Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average."
And you're an extremely illustrative case, because even though about four people told you that you were wrong (some more politely and some less), you PERSIST in your belief that E != 1/2 m v^2 (approximately).
I mean, we collectively didn't even manage to inject enough doubt into you that you'd take the trouble to look it up instead of continuing to support your mistaken position in public. Either you're a troll, or you're a REALLY textbook case of Dunning-Kruger.
As for your car, do you REALLY think that you use the same energy every second, continuously and linearly like you claim? I mean, don't you HEAR the engine rev up to higher RPM before it (or you) shifts gears down again? D'you know what that higher RPM means? It means more power (and power, for your information is defined as energy per time).
As for my calculation of some 500 billion times more energy required to accelerate to 1/2 light vs. 500mph, I showed my work, and you can find the basic equation I used on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy#Relativistic_kinetic_energy_of_rigid_bodies
Anyway, I'm going to see if I can preserve this thread as a case study in Dunning-Kruger (or perhaps internet trolling), though even if you are a troll, it's STILL a great demo of Dunning-Kruger.
--PeterM