Pluto is a dwarf planet. This is really cool but at 20 light years away.. we're gonna need a bigger boat.
Trust me, I understand the sentiment of wanting to explore, but as of now I'm happy just to prove these planets are not just possible, but actually common.
20 light years? How long would it take to get there? A couple of months? Am down to move (as long as I can take someone)
The astronaut would get some benefits from special relativity in this trip, (making it seem a little shorter on board the spaceship versus time passing on Earth) but since we haven't built any craft that get going anywhere near the speed of light, it would still take a very long while.
This is really cool. It's weird reading the comments about it though, how people refuse to accept that we aren't the only ones in the universe. Why the hell would there be a giant universe of trillions of solar systems and ours is the only one with a planet with life on it?
there are other life forms living on distant planets observing us in much the same way we're observing these other solar systems
I don't know much about science, but why are we putting so much emphasis on planets that have comparable things to Earth, as far as deeming them "able to sustain life". These brilliant scientists don't consider that another planet could produce another life form that needs things particular to that environment? Can't all planets technically be inhabitable? Maybe not for humans but for something else.
Is there Life on Gliese 581G? <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/i_zkDiO9_Tg?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i_zkDiO9_Tg?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> (Eh, not quite the same ring to it...)
Somewhat. Most places that seem impossible to sustain life probably are. However there is probably more to life than we think. It goes back to the only model for life that we know and that's here on Earth. Once we discover life elsewhere a lot of things get thrown out the window. It is almost like the belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. For instance, if we discover some form of life on the Saturian moon Titan, then we know that life can be based on things other than water like methane. Also if life is discovered on the Jupiter moon Europa, then the habitable zone theory is pretty much gone too for the most part. With all the discoveries on this planet where life pops up and wasn't expected, we are learning a lot. I think our model for life will be heavily revised over the coming decades.
The newly discovered planet is locked in relation to its sun the way the moon is locked in relation to Earth - with only one side bathed in sunlight. But the researchers said the extremes of dark cold and bright heat are reduced along a band that circles the planet where the dark and light meet, creating a wide range of promising environmental niches. I love stuff like this. Thanks for the story, rimrocker. The planet sounds very similar to a planet in a science fiction series by Brian Aldiss. In the novels, the planet Helliconia has a year lasting more than 2500 of our years (so it has some rotation, unlike the groovy discovered planet), with correspondingly longer seasons lasting hundreds of years. The Helliconia Trilogy, by Brian Aldiss, is a very cool read for anyone likes SF and speculative fiction.
Counter-argument: If there is other life, the possibility of none of the other species being more technologically advanced than us and being able to traverse through space is slim...
The emphasis is placed on life comparable to that on Earth because that's the only type of life we can potentially detect remotely.
Actually, there's no way to prove that your statement is true (at least at present). We have no idea what the probability is for life to form or for life to become intelligent. There may be 100 million planets something like the Earth in this galaxy, but if the odds of life forming are something like 1 in 100 million (or lower), then we could certainly be the only planet with life in this galaxy.
Not just what we can detect but what we can define as life. Even on Earth the definition of what is alive is still a bit murky. For example are viruses alive? Are prions, self-replicating protein strings alive? Are crystals that appear to self replicate alive?
It really does just come down to what we can detect, though. At least in the case of extrasolar planets. The only way for us to determine if there is life on one of these planets would be for us to see signatures of atmospheric chemistry that would only be happening (based on our understanding of planet formation) if there was Earth-like life on the planet.
