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Sep 30, 2010

This May Very Well Be the First New Earth

You are looking at what could be the fourth planet on the Gliese 581 star system, 20.3 light years from Earth. If the NASA artist rendition looks very much like our Earth... it's because it is similar to Earth.

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star. A starship traveling at near the speed of light would only take 20.3 years to get there, which is not that much. Until now, astronomers had discovered five planets around this star. Some of them were too close to it, making them too hot to be habitable. Others were too far and too cold. But now, a sixth planet has been discovered right on the "habitable zone", the fourth in distance from the star: Gliese 581g.

If the discoveries from the planet hunters at University of California Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington are right, Gliese 581g could be habitable.
Now, before you jump into the Enterprise and go there camping, roast some marshmallows, and get back leaving a lot of beer bottles and crap behind, being potentially habitable doesn't mean that we can just go there and thrive. It doesn't even mean that this planet is full of little green men or buxom big blue women. It just means that this is a planet that could sustain life, with liquid water and an atmosphere.

Gliese 581g has three to four times the mass of Earth, orbiting the star at an zippy 37 days. According to data gathered by the Keck I Telescope HIRES spectrometer, it's a rocky planet with a "solid surface and enough gravity to hold to an atmosphere."

More importantly, according to Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, not only their "findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet" but "the fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

In other words, the chances of the Universe being bubbling with life of all kinds and forms just jumped beyond our most optimistic hopes.

68 comments:

miecak said...

Read about it this morning, exciting stuff :D

pixel said...

Sounds exciting, but I wonder if we will ever send a spacecraft there in our generation

Alex said...

i heard about it that morning in radio. i wonder if there are aliens or if we will settle down on this 2nd earth one day :)

David said...

Already seen this but quite interesting I presume :d

HiveNode said...

It doesn't spin. And the gravity is fucked up. Nobody could live on it, but it's a nice discovery.

Anonymous said...

Indeed exciting news..
But I wonder when we will ever go there. At the moment everyone thinks, not in my lifetime, but I guess that's what everyone was thinking before we landed on the moon too.

Joebloggs said...

heard it on the radio earlier... crazy stuff

Tonyy said...

interesting find. i ma go do some more research on this

M K said...

I'll take the not-too-optimistic route, like HiveNode. I would like to live long enough for us to find a truly habitable planet.

RandomlyRated said...

yeah, i saw this on the news. may be a future colony?

Vathir said...

Very interesting

Anonymous said...

I think on these recent events we need to focus more on space exploration. Now with China and Russia on our heels this is truly the new space race.

problem.question said...

i will never be able to go there =(

llllollllll said...

This is very interesting stuff. Planets like our own may not be so rare afterall.

Unknown said...

It's exciting news, I just wish the media wouldn't overdo it like they are now.

Final Fantasy XIV Fan said...

beautiful... amazing... :) we need to discover how to send probes at near light speed, send one there, and in 40-60 years get information about that planet :D

Bart said...

haha yo that is fucking awesome. i read this article last nite. im glad others think this is cool too.

Skimbosh said...

Hey look! A new place to fight over and destroy.

Travie said...

Color me interested :D

Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen said...

That's awesome. It's a shame it will take us so long to even get an unmanned vessel there.

Car Enthusiast said...

I mean, this is so exiciting I hope I can move there soon and bring my car

jamespwns said...

I wonder if science will develop some sort of space hyper sleep, so that the population can all ride over there on a spaceship and inhabit it one day.

Naj said...

ahhh.. read this article earlier.
really fascinating.

MOBSCENE said...

Wow that's awesome man i wonder how that new planet looks like maybe better?

Hotsaucer said...

I heard about this earlier today. I was so excited. Too bad I won't be alive to perhaps colonize it one day, but it's still exciting to thing about.

Kash said...

Holy shit, AMAZING! I gotta look into this more. THanks! Following

Saryn said...

I hope this planet doesn't turn out to be another misinterpretation of the information presented by its presence. It would really raise the notion that there is the possibility of something more than us existing in the universe and maybe make some pig heads open their eyes.

Anonymous said...

hm, very interesting! supporting!

max said...

uh :S prety far away.. But nice find :)

Paul said...

Heard about this on the radio this afternoon! Freakin' exciting stuff!

Advantage-player said...

kewl! I will start the trip tomorow :)

killerkun said...

well if it isn't a really lucky find guys!!

Ray said...

just read about this! so crazy!

Tom said...

Wow thats really amazing. Ive always been fascinated by the idea of life on other planets. Whether or not we'll ever experience it first hand is another tory. But who knows?

vpercuoco said...

Wow, that pretty cool. Keep me updated.

Anonymous said...

exciting discovery

Liv said...

thats really frickn awesome. It kinda blows my mind in a way

Intellectual Relapse said...

cool, although I think they should give it a real name now, and make it sound awesome

Tommi Clox said...

The universe is freaking awesome! Thanks for posting this.

Touge Assassin said...

This is indeed very intriguing.

Paul said...

very interesting ;) amazing blog btw!

Anonymous College Student said...

Can't wait to meet aliens

DongAlong said...

aliens.

The Geeks Paradise said...

That is really cool. I'm gonna do some more reading on this. Thanks!

Biff Tanner said...

I Hope so we a new one

Rezden said...

This is a great read. Pretty exciting stuff. Next stop, Stargate.

Roberto said...

wow this is so scary..:P

TheCoolIgloo said...

This kind of stuff makes me so nervous.

surrealmethod said...

I love learning about space. Keep up the good work.

Thanks!

Waldo09 said...

I got dips on the oceanside view places! haha.

Politically Challenged. said...

Heard so much about this, i can only hope we can somehow get there :)

Archivist X0042 said...

i seen this on the news today...sounds nuts

FunkyHomosapien said...

Sweet, the universe is so big it's unbelievable.

Janus Kane said...

God damn Comeatme, we have to have a bowl session sometime and travel the universe I could talk for hours... Nay, fays about this. I loved the content today, you always managed to keep me entertained.

The possibilities... I might be able to live out my dream, and touch another planet. I'd gladly give 21 years of my life to view the splendorous stretch of open space, and to finally do what no other human ever has... Start a new world.

It quite literally gives me hope to continue, thanks mate.
-JKane

anontcotrol said...

Exciting! I look forward to seeing if water can be found

remzi said...

Awesome

Gordon said...

This makes me so excited.

((return the love<3))

Applelove said...

I would kill to be one of the first colonists. Seriously, it would be amazing to explore a new frontier, with potential for new discoveries.
Sadly, I'd be too damned old by the time I got there.

Autumn said...

It's a shame to know things like this, but also know that as things are and are progressing, we will never 'know' in our lifetimes whether or not it can sustain life or not.

Blake said...

This is going to be like my goal in life.. be one of the first to colonize the next Earth-like planet.

Katie Greene said...

so i shouldn't take time off this Christmas to go visit this planet?

Tapier said...

This is some of the best news weve heard so far!

I am surprised we found a hospitable planet so fast. I wonder how well reach it though? Can't wait to see.

Jemz said...

Can't wait to meet the aliens..
I hope they will be better than my fellow humans.
;-)

S!

Joshua said...

Amazing how many blogs are posting this information! Checkout my personal blog for a official CNN video.

nmbr22 said...

We were all born too early. We do live in interesting times though... but I would be great to live in an age of galaxy exploration.

Crunky said...

So now that we've found a planet, we need to manufacture a crisis, and tell everyont that the world will end soon, but there will be limited space on the space transports to this new homeworld... then we let the politicians and greedy people hog up all the seats, and send them off into space, leaving all the cool people on earth in peace...

hunter time said...

thats awesome and tbh i'm sure you're right about there being many planets like that

Nailgun said...

Well, I'm still going to hop on my Enterprise and grab myself some land. It'll be just like the gold rush.