Most people are too busy watching American Idol to realize how important this news is. Amazing!!!
A new member in a family of planets circling a red dwarf star 20 light-years away has just been found. It’s called Gliese 581g, and the ‘g’ may very well stand for Goldilocks.
Gliese 581g is the first world discovered beyond Earth that’s the right size and location for life.
“Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it,” Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz, told Discovery News.
It was only a matter of time. In the infinity of the universe it’s inconceivable that there isn’t an infinite number of planets that would support some sort of intelligent life.
20 light years away?? How many thousand years would it take to get there? One thing I find stunning about space, is the vast distances invloved…and how slow our space craft go. Yeah, they’re moving fast,but to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, we need to be going light speed, I don’t see that happening for awhile…Of course,one could try a wormhole…
Now we know where those buggers are coming from that mess with our bombs! j/k
I do not see how that planet would be suitable. No rotation, sun burns one side and dark freezes the other side. None-the-less interesting place to see and speculate about.
IIRC the planet is tidally locked so that one side bakes, the other side freezes. Interesting to see how big of a ring around the planet where life could flourish.
generational ships…
or we could just send frozen eggs and sperm… or something along those lines.
i dunno if 50% of light speed is plausible… mere 40 years then.
crazy thing is we wouldn’t even hear about it on earth til 20 years after they landed.
life’s work for something you’ll never find out about.
Also the amount of matter in the universe is finite and has been measured.
and scientists are always correct never wrong ?
yeah have heard other theories that this is a theory kind thing that some say its impossible then others say it does end its like a huge loop ? then whats beyond that loop ? OH nothing OH so more space! NO it does not work that way ? how does it work the argument goes on and on
scientists are only correct for a short while till they find out the next fact
look at global warming !!! their is some quality science for you
You don’t happen to hate the discovery channel? :sarcastic:
In all seriousness they know jack and shit about this new planet. They’re watching a red dwarf and making educated guesses based on distortions (wobbles, light etc) they’ve seen. Hell it could be just a big cold rock or a giant space turd from some galactic giants, who knows. Now they’re running around talking about life, it’s all media hype for funding.
The science of space travel is interesting, but we are never leaving our solar system. Even if we could, where would go, and how would we get there?
If there is life on this aforementioned planet, even if it is a planet of disease fee, naked, super hot female models that don’t age, love to cook and put out like porn stars, what does it matter, we are never going to be able to get there.
Why?
Voyager 1 is the fastest space craft made by man. It is covering a distance of about 315 billion miles a year. That star is 117 trillion miles away. Translation: it would take 370,758 years to get to that planet at Voyager’s speed. If the Neanderthals had launched Voyager, it would only be getting to that planet tomorrow.
Even traveling at light speed, it would take 20 years. We can’t even build a car that will last 20 years without falling apart, so how the hell are going to build a space ship that lasts that long. What energy source can accelerate a ship to that speed, because from what I recall about physics, it would require infinite energy. Can humans survive traveling that speed?
Even if we invented man made worm holes and some type of space bridge. Worm holes have to be opened from both sides, meaning, we’d have to get there first, coordinate with earth, to ensure we tearing through space correctly and going where we want to go.
It’s interesting how everything is relative in the universe. 20 light years away is right next door by Astronomical standards, but too far for us to reach.
100 Billion galaxies, containing 1-3 hundred billion stars each, with planets discovered pretty much every where look (100 + found and counting) leaves some numbers so large, it’s infinite to us, and that’s what’s referred to as “the known universe” being that’s what we can see.