New Potentially Habitable Planet Found
Before you start packing, you should probably know that Gliese 581g, the planet in question, is 20 light-years away. (For the inquisitive reader, a light-year is not a measure of time.)
The planet was discovered by a team working at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
“We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone — one too hot and one too cold — and now we have one in the middle that’s just right,” said Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz. (Reuters)
This discovery is yet more proof that God is all powerful; how else would he be able to create two separate habitable planets, so far away from one another, and still keep track of the goings-on on both?
They found a “planet” that’s “not too hot, not too cold”. Well the big bear is still gonna eat you if you touch his planet! The fact it’s dubbed “hospidable” is a joke – there is 0 way of knowing how “hospidable” it is chemically, and chances are its just a giant rock that happens to be a moderate temperature since that’s pretty much all that’s out there bar gas/ice which is unlikelt to be a ncie temperaure anytime soon.
Oh well, fun times. Someone needs to give these guys dayjobs.
They absolutely CAN tell the chemical make up of the atmosphere and surface, it will just take time. They do the same way they can tell the composition of distant planets in our own solar system. They use the same spectral analysis we all did in Earth Science in high school. Sheesh.
Scientific exploration has always been considered an important “day job”. Or do you still believe that the world is flat AND at the centre of the universe? The sun orbits around us right…?
I want a dayjob!
@Lis WRONG!
They tell us they can do spectral analysis and they quiz us in H.S. and universities and give out “A”s or “F’s. but its always proven wrong. When we went to the moon, we found out it was different than we predicted. When we got to Mars just now, we found out we were wrong about its composition. We’re just realizing we were dead wrong about what comets are made out of and they pass by all the time. They can’t even decide if there’s oil in the gulf or not so any analysis 20 light years away is wanking. I’m just saying pack for all weather if you make the trip ’cause our best astrophysicists are always wrong. They can’t even agree on a unified theory for goodness sakes!
ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID!!!!!
The method by which they find out the chemical make up is call spectroscopy, and they use large wavelengths that are low energy so they can travel far enough to reach the planet and when the wavelengths return to Earth they have the reading of what specific molecules make up the atomsphere, like O2 and O3 that make up ours. But this is all useless because man will kill themselves before we find a way to travel 20 light years, I mean look we have people that believe another hospitable planet is proof of God!
Hospitable*
So, if we travel the speed of light, it will take us 20 years to reach the planet.
I’m just gonna go ahead and say that humans from Earth probably won’t ever live on this planet.
The speed of light is roughly 1.079 billion km/h. Let’s say we travel 1/5 that speed … 215,850,570 km/h. At that speed it would take approximately 100 years to reach this planet. Considering that the fastest mode of travel human beings have come up with has been about 28,800 km/h (this is roughly the speed of a spaceship in orbit … 8,000 m/s,). We’re about 215,820,000 km/h short.
I realise that all of these are approximations and I may even be wrong about them, but to think that human beings from the planet Earth will ever inhabit this planet is unreasonable.
Ahhh ut your forgetting that time and the speed you travel are related if you can manage to go at close the speed of light time will stay still. However the time taken to accelerate to such speeds and then slow down will probably take up most of your voyage. Assuming we can do all these things ….
You know what? I think that I have solved the problem. Easy. We will send frozen sperm and eggs(cryogenics) and problem solved:D (and educate a young child, a genius that will be 10 years old when they leave(teacher, experts and family) planet earth)whatever.)
Yes… that’s brilliant! Your genius child will be dead before he gets there, and where you gonna put your eggs and sperm? Might as well send bees and flowers…
Hi and lmao:D The child(or as many necessary) will be educated, learn how to create embryos through Artificial Insemination but I assume that it will be an advanced method of AI and etc. Anyway.
The Sperm and the eggs will be in the fridge(did I answer your question?)
Bees and flowers . . . meh ~ why meh? Because I don’t want 2 answer 2 that right now.
Personally, I would like these guys to keep their night jobs. I mean when my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren don’t have a planet here, I’d like them to be able to travel the 1,955,232,000,000 miles to this other supposedly habitable planet to then usurp like the Europeans did to the Native Americans. Since we have learned from our past and would never possibly repeat it.
Hang on, if you read the story they actually say that one side of the planet is too hot (up to 160degrees) while the other side is constantly too cold (minus 25??), the planet is much closer to it’s sun than we are and takes just 3 days to travel around it, also, it doesn’t really spin much. The most excellent scientists then said however, that living on the line between the too hot and too cold parts would maybe be okay in a dawn/dusk type of area… seems the news reports differ a bit though as usual.
ANYWAY, we should send monkeys, a pack of marlboros and Sarah Palin to check it out. Mostly because I think that it would be best for her to be a little farther away from this solar system than she currently is and partly because I’m sure her little monkey offspring (my mind has created some bizarre on-rocket sexual encounter between her and a couple of horny primates) would be very cute but hysterically dumb.
Yes, the offspring would be hysterically dumb, but through no fault of the monkeys.
i believe in time travel
Please keep in mind, by “habitable” it means that it’s considered possible for life to exist. It doesn’t mean HUMANS can exist there.
Goldilocks: The chemical make up of other planets and/or what gases are prevalent in their atmosphere really means relatively little in regard to whether it is habitable because life on other planets isn’t going to follow the same “guidelines” as Earth because these other planets are NOT Earth. Plants on Earth require carbon dioxide. Humans require oxygen. If life exists on other planets they may be evolutionally slower or more advanced.
Once upon a time, on Earth, single-celled organisms existed that didn’t even breathe. And more advanced organisms respirated hydrogen or carbon. But they were alive. As life evolved it changed the gases in the air as the planet’s life evolved and its needs changed.
The comment about this possibly habitable planet most likely being just a giant rock of moderate temperature leading you to the assumption that life isn’t possible take a minute and think about that. Moss, fungus, trees, and lichen, as well as a plethora of other plants grow on hunks of rock at moderate temperatures in the mountains, and many animals thrive. Just because their ecosystem is different from ours doesn’t mean an ecosystem doesn’t exist or that it can’t.
“Life” doesn’t always refer to mammals, humans, or animals in general. An article stating life may be possible on another planet can mean something as simple as plants, amoebas, or random single-celled organisms.
Who’s to say that the big man upstairs isn’t trying out different ecosystems and habitats etc to see which flourishes as he evolves them? All life is experimental. Some life forms survive, adapt, grow, and flourish. Some don’t. To assume Earth is the only planet that contains life is egotistical and arrogant.
So that’s why all Americans say that the only intelligent life is in the USA??
I wouldn’t say ALL Americans think that, however the ones that do are definitely included in the “egotistical and arrogant” category. A large percentage of those that feel that way are probably also the ones that massacre our language and cannot spell or use proper grammar. It’s like the couch potatoes that sit watching sports and think they can do a better job than the pro athletes just because they didn’t like the play that was called. They are probably uneducated by choice, overweight, lazy, and think they’re smarter than the rest of the world.
I am proud of my American freedoms however I do feel that sometimes claiming to be American is an embarassment because other countries see the ignorant masses and associate us all with them.
Life itself is very resilient and can spring up in all kinds of conditions that humans could never live in. I’m gonna bet on that and say that this place has at least some form of life.
It is too bad that with current rocket technology it would take thousands of years for humans to reach this planet. I figure if the sun is going to burn out eventually, we’re going to have to find a new planet to relocate to. But we got plenty of time — billions of years. Perhaps as rocket technology improves we could visit this planet robotically, taking about 200 years to reach the planet from earth.
It is interesting to see possible new discoveries of life and new planets whether we could live there or not.
Of course, we may not inhabit this planet but there must be countless worlds similar to earth in the universe which eventually we will find and habitate, I imagine.
If there’s a God, I’m sure ‘he’ would agree with me. I mean why create the human race only to sentence them to a fiery death billions of years from now? He knows where going to find a way out of it because we’re the most important form of life in the Universe (ahem) and he has a big cosmic plan for all of us right? LOL.