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| Scientists Find Planet That Could Support Life | ||
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| .4ngryToasters |
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you would
Registered Member #149
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 01:08AMPosts: 2039 |
I got this from Yahoo news: -[link]- It has been dumbed down for the general public which makes me wonder about some of the details, but all in all It's a pretty significant find. Probably one of the most amazing things is that in 1995 we didn't know of any extrasolar planets, but today (just over a decade later) we've found litterally hundreds; and now this one that could potentially (but doubtfully) support life! Technology has come so far that we can measure tempuratures of objects trillions of miles away, and detect minute spectrum shifts in the light of stars to determine that they are being tugged on by a planet (spitzer, one of the telescopes that does this, is cooled by liquid helium, which has a temperature of 4 degrees above absolute zero... try cooling your pc with that!). NASA is actually building a satalite that will be able to tell the make-up of extrasolar planets light years away using a spectrometer (device that measures wavelengths of light to determine what elements are in an object). Anyway on to the article: WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe." The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun. There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards. "It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions." The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business." The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds. What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life. The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs. The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger. Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said. However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers. Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter. The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think. "This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability." Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1. Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said. "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X." Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water. "You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back." The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere. "I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet." Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days. Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds. But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark. Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said. Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system. The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers. Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said. A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates. "Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said. Edited Wed Apr 25 2007, 02:29PM |
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| Zero |
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I want to fuck your hand.
Registered Member #571
Joined: Thu Feb 15 2007, 09:59PMPosts: 2809 |
Great you found planets. And when we find one we CAN live on. Lets send all the intelligent people to start a smarter society. But, one important thing. We have made a space shuttle that can reach the speed of light. And since these things are already light years away, it would take fucking YEARS to get to some of them. Awww, dreams crushed. -we are kitty | ||
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| gLiTch |
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Anal Assassin
Registered Member #455
Joined: Mon Oct 09 2006, 04:58AMPosts: 3848 |
that is some sick shit. I am very interested in this space shit. Always was. If only we could imagine what was really out there. The actual distance and space thats in..space. A person could go crazy thinking about shit like that. One of Jupiters moons may have life on it... not sustain it, but may have life on it, frozen. I forget which one it was. Good find toaster, i really enjoyed reading this article. |
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| Mikey B |
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Shotty King
Registered Member #634
Joined: Thu Apr 05 2007, 08:11PMPosts: 58 |
that is sweet. I would love to know if there are really other people out there. Just a intrest of mine. | ||
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| jigg4joe |
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Registered Member #326
Joined: Wed Jul 05 2006, 04:15AMPosts: 635 |
technically, you can reach anywhere in the universe if you travel close enough to the speed of light. as you travel faster and faster, your clock slows down relative to someone who is stationary. to them, you would appear to be stopped in time, while the clock at your destination speeds up. so, to an earth observer it would look like it took you almost an infinite amount of time to get there, and whoever was living at your destination would be dead for thousands or millions of years depending on the distance and your speed. it's fucked up stuff, but it's possible. |
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| .4ngryToasters |
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you would
Registered Member #149
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 01:08AM Posts: 2039 |
One of Jupiters moons may have life on it... not sustain it, but may have life on it, frozen. I forget which one it was. You're thinking of Europa (although Callisto and Ganamede may also have a similar conditions). If you're interested in this kind of stuff, then I suggest you check out signing up for an astronomy class. Great you found planets. And when we find one we CAN live on. Lets send all the intelligent people to start a smarter society. But, one important thing. We have made a space shuttle that can reach the speed of light. And since these things are already light years away, it would take fucking YEARS to get to some of them. Awww, dreams crushed. -we are kitty Well the point of finding new planets is not so we can visit them (yet). The only pheasable thing to do would be to comunnicate with potential life. We started brodcasting radio waves in the early 1900's. Those waves didn't stop at our atmosphere, they kept going out into the universe, so anyone listening within a 100 light year radius of earth would have a detailed history of our civilization. If we were to build a spaceship that could somehow transport us to that planet, we would need sooo many resources, that the ship itself would be about the size of the earth, and would use all of our natural resources. The only way I could see interstallar travel being done (with a living being) would require one to be able to move in the 5th dimension, possibly even the 6th (5th would mean you go from one place in the universe to the other instantaneously. So far only atomic sized particles have been found to do this, they spring into existance for nanoseconds then disappear from existance forever. 6th dimension would mean the same as the 5th dimension, but instead of dissappearing and reappearing in one place, you travel to all the possible places you could possibly appear at the same time... ouch). So in a way, the only way to make interstellar travel possible is to be converted into energy, at which point there would be no point in traveling to that distant planet, as you would be just another radio wave to that life form. This is the kinda shit they teach you in astronomy. I have to say, it's one of the highlights of my week, very interesting class. Edited Wed Apr 25 2007, 08:47PM |
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| Noname|Boom |
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That one guy...
Registered Member #250
Joined: Tue May 09 2006, 11:59PMPosts: 2603 |
Sweet, too fucking bad its out of our solar system and it'd take light years to get there. But hey, our technology has been advancing very rapidly during this period of time, so it might be done, or at least we'll probably be able to communicate with other lifeforms (IF there is) by the time WE're still alive. It sounds very cool, I have to say that this is the biggest thing i've heard of in space since when we found out other planets beyond our solar system (as you said), but this time, it may support life! Well, I guess we'll just have to see what happens 
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| nostie |
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Registered Member #185
Joined: Thu Mar 30 2006, 10:42PMPosts: 3167 |
In any case, what we see of the planet is VERY VERY OLD since light travels at the speed that it does... how many billions of lightyears are these things away from us? | ||
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| Knightrider |
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Meteor 2016
Registered Member #316
Joined: Mon Jun 26 2006, 09:14PMPosts: 3503 |
It said that the planet was 20.5 lightyears away or something. Lol all of the extra terrestrial scared people are probably freakin out right now. | ||
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| Zero |
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I want to fuck your hand.
Registered Member #571
Joined: Thu Feb 15 2007, 09:59PM Posts: 2809 |
IF you believe in evolution, I propose a quick theory Some say that human life could have started hundreds of thousands of years ago from a crater, carrying bacteria, crashed into earth. and because of Evolution, and "intelligent design"(mixing theories, I know, just work with it), humans have developed over time from small molecules. Take this same principal for whatever planets they think they have found, and ARE finding that life might be living there, they would have had to have done the same thing our planet did. Starting as bacteria, humans had to go through different environments, and develop. And since our two environments could be very different, they could have adapted differently, thus they could have developed into something OTHER then humans. They could have had feline's just like we did, but THEY were the ones that turned into something like humans, instead of chimps, and stuff like that. Long story short, they wont be humans there, they will be something different, due to their different environments. Get what im saying? |
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