First Planet outside our Solar System to be Officially Declared Habitable

[Rasa1111]

Gliese 581d

I knew we would find it in the Gliese System!



A planet 20 light years away is the first outside the solar system to be officially declared habitable by European scientists.
The 'exoplanet' Gliese 581d has conditions that could support Earth-like life, including possible watery oceans and rainfall, they say.
Yet any future space voyagers landing there would find themselves in truly alien surroundings.
The sky is likely to be murky red, not blue, gravity is twice that of Earth, doubling the weight of anyone standing on the surface, and the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere would almost certainly not be breathable by humans.
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/OddSpot/2011/05/17/Planet_outside_solar_system_is_habitable_613962.ht ml

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201105/r768326_6517349.jpg
A model shows the possible surface temperatures of planet Gliese 581d, located around 20 light years from Earth.


orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, located around 20 light years from Earth, which makes it one of our closest neighbours. Gliese 581d orbits on the outer fringes of the star's Goldilocks zone, where it is not so hot that water boils away, nor so cold that water is perpetually frozen.
Instead, the temperature is just right for water to exist in liquid form.
"With a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere - a likely scenario on such a large planet - the climate of Gliese 581d is not only stable against collapse but warm enough to have oceans, clouds and rainfall," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a press release.
For budding travellers, though, Gliese 581d would "still be a pretty strange place to visit", CNRS said.
"The denser air and thick clouds would keep the surface in a perpetual murky red twilight, and its large mass means surface gravity would be around double that on Earth."
Getting to the planet would still require a sci-fi breakthrough in travel for earthlings.
A spaceship travelling close to light speed would take more than 20 years to get there, while our present rocket technology would take 300,000 years.
More than 500 exoplanets orbiting other stars have been recorded since 1995, detected mostly by a tiny wobble in stellar light.
They are named after their star and listed alphabetically in order of discovery.
Big interest

Until now, the big interest in Gliese 581's roster of planets focused on Gliese 581g.
It leapt into the headlines last year as "Zarmina's World", after its observers announced it had roughly the same mass as Earth and was also close to the Goldilocks zone.


But that discovery has since been discounted by many. Indeed, some experts suspect Gliese 581g may not even exist but was simply a hiccup in starlight.
Its big brother, Gliese 581d, has a mass at least seven times that of Earth and is about twice our planet's size, according to the new study, which appears in British publication

The Astrophysical Journal Letters.


The planet, spotted in 2007, had initially been dismissed as a candidate in the hunt for life.
It receives less than a third of the solar radiation Earth gets and may be tidally locked, meaning that one side of it always faces the sun, which would give it permanent dayside and nightside.


But the new model, devised by CNRS climate scientists Robin Wordsworth, Francois Forget and colleagues, showed surprising potential.
Its atmosphere would store heat well thanks to its dense CO2, a greenhouse gas, while the red light from the star would also penetrate the atmosphere and warm the surface.
"In all cases, the temperatures allow for the presence of liquid water on the surface," the researchers said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/17/3219037.htm

:KS

[Rasa1111]

I had this saved on my hdd..
Cool model of The Gliese System compared with our own..
http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=192519&stc=1&d=1305714090

[el_koraco]

but do they have ubuntu there?!

[Oxwivi]

but do they have ubuntu there?!
You mean Canonical is already spreading Ubuntu in outerspace?!

[Oxwivi]

How many Solar years is 20 light years?

[Rasa1111]

but do they have ubuntu there?!

I don't know , but when I get my spaceship finished I'm taking Ubuntu with me! lol :P

[NormanFLinux]

There's a human bias in favor of carbon-based life forms. We have not discovered intelligent life elsewhere so the Anthromorphic Principle hasn't been falsified - I don't think it will be in our lifetime.

[Grenage]

It's a shame that the human race will probably be extinct long before we leave this rock, so we'll never know if these crack-pot proclamations are remotely accurate. ;)

[Oxwivi]

It's a shame that the human race will probably be extinct long before we leave this rock, so we'll never know if these crack-pot proclamations are remotely accurate. ;)
++

[Smilax]

How many Solar years is 20 light years?


one's a distance and one's a time.


but anyway, 20.

[Zero2Nine]

How many Solar years is 20 light years?

Light Years is a unit of distance not time.

[Oxwivi]

one's a distance and one's a time.


but anyway, 20.
Oops, thanks for pointing that out. I was on cloud 18.

[Rasa1111]

Oops, thanks for pointing that out. I was on cloud 18.

haha!

hey, Im there a lot.. Maybe I saw you! lol :P

[pommie]

A planet 20 light years away is the first outside the solar system to be officially declared habitable by European scientists.I always thought that the scientists lived in a world of their own, but really, what about the rest of us.
That needs a comma inserted between "habitable" and "by European scientists". :)

Cheers David

[Rasa1111]

Is the Rocky Alien Planet Gliese 581d Really Habitable?

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=192524&stc=1&d=1305716790


http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=192522&stc=1&d=1305716790


A rocky alien planet called Gliese 581d may be the first known world beyond Earth capable of supporting life as we know it, a new study suggests.

Astronomers performing a new atmospheric-modeling study have found that the distant planet likely lies in the "habitable zone" of its host star — that just-right range of distances that allow liquid water to exist. The alien world could have oceans, clouds and rainfall, according to the study.

Those are pretty big ifs, of course.

The study assumes that Gliese 581d, which is about seven times as massive as Earth, has a thick, carbon-dioxide-based atmosphere. That's very possible on a planet so large, researchers said, but it's not a given. [Video: Life-Sustaining "Super Earth" Gliese 581d]

The Gliese 581 system: Worlds of possibilities

Gliese 581d's parent star, known as Gliese 581, is a red dwarf located 20 light-years from Earth, just a stone's throw in the cosmic scheme of things. So far, astronomers have detected six planets orbiting the star, and Gliese 581d is not the only one intriguing to scientists thinking about the possibility of life beyond Earth.

Another planet in the system, called Gliese 581g, is about three times as massive as Earth, and it's also most likely a rocky world. This planet is located right in the middle of the habitable zone around the parent star, making it a prime candidate for liquid water and life as we know it — if the planet exists.

Some researchers question the analysis used to discover the planet, and say they cannot confirm 581g in follow-up studies. The planet's discoverers, however, are standing by their find. [The Strangest Alien Planets]

Gliese 581d orbits outside of 581g, far enough away from its star that researchers first thought it too cold for life when it was originally discovered in 2007. But a strong greenhouse effect may warm 581d up substantially, perhaps enough to support liquid water.

That's the tentative conclusion of the new study, as well as several other recent studies by different research teams that also modeled Gliese 581d's possible atmosphere.
http://www.space.com/11692-alien-planet-gliese-581d-habitable-life-debate.html

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=192523&stc=1&d=1305716790

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=192525&stc=1&d=1305716790

[Onoku]

That's pretty neat, I remember reading something about this a few months ago, but they hadn't come to all of these conclusions at that point.

[Philsoki]

So how long would it take to get there with current technology? 700'000 years, more?

[Onoku]

So how long would it take to get there with current technology? 700'000 years, more?

I think the article said 300,000. Not too bad.. with the rate of medical technology, we will live to be that old in the next decade or two. =P

[sostentado]

Do you know that there are extra-terrestrial beings out there? The government just won't make it public because there will be lots of questions that our origins and religions.

[t0p]

I find myself oddly excited by this news. I mean, I've intuitively "known" since childhood that habitable planets other than the earth must be out there (count all the stars in the observable universe, do the maths, etc etc); and there's (probably) no way I will ever go to one. 300,000 years is a long time.

But near-light speed travel may become possible one day soonish (like in a few centuries or so). Rocket technology is crap, rockets travel so slowly that even a trip to Jupiter or Uranus (heh) would take a long long time. But there's no reason to discount a paradigm shift in space travel technology that will bring near light speed travel within our grasp. Of course, all that relativity stuff and E=mc^2 represent pretty substantial hurdles. But so what? Just cos we can't imagine a solution, doesn't mean a solution is nonexistent. Just think how primitive man's jaw must have hit the ground when the paradigm shift of the wheel rolled out of its inventor's cave.

But really - "Gliese 581d"? Someone needs to come up with a better name. I propose "t0p's World". Or Pluto, just so we can say "Pluto so is a planet!"

[NormanFLinux]

A Super Earth is a planet more massive than ours but much smaller than a gas giant.

Life could exist there but it won't be oxygen-breathing life.

[Onoku]

But near-light speed travel may become possible one day soonish (like in a few centuries or so). Rocket technology is crap, rockets travel so slowly that even a trip to Jupiter or Uranus (heh) would take a long long time.

The New Horizons (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html) satellite was launched in 2006 and passed Jupiter a few months ago.

[Rasa1111]

Do you know that there are extra-terrestrial beings out there? The government just won't make it public because there will be lots of questions that our origins and religions.


Yes, I do know it. ;)

[Rasa1111]

But really - "Gliese 581d"? Someone needs to come up with a better name. I propose "t0p's World". Or Pluto, just so we can say "Pluto so is a planet!"

haha!
Sounds good! :D <3

[Oxwivi]

The New Horizons (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html) satellite was launched in 2006 and passed Jupiter a few months ago.
That is long. A tiny group of humans on a huge spaceship for years is doomed. I mean even a relatively big group of 20 to 30 people can't stand each other for a few months in the Arctic. I don't exactly remember where I read it, but a dispute escalated to point of brandishing a kitchen knife vs an axe.

[Onoku]

Well yeah, I was just making the point that while rocket technology is no where near light-speed, it isn't crap either. It's going at like 2,000 mph or something like that. Even if we could travel at the speed of light, the trip to Gliese 581 would take 20 years, and I think they would need some kind of hibernation system so they wouldn't go insane.

[Oxwivi]

To be honest, I never saw the point of exploring the space beyond the geostationary satellite level (it was Stratosphere, I think?). Even at the current rate of population growth, I don't see us overpopulating the Earth before coming to our senses. If it's to make discoveries, try the ocean. 98% of it is still mocking us.

[Onoku]

To be honest, I never saw the point of exploring the space beyond the geostationary satellite level (it was Stratosphere, I think?). Even at the current rate of population growth, I don't see us overpopulating the Earth before coming to our senses. If it's to make discoveries, try the ocean. 98% of it is still mocking us.

This is actually something that has always bothered me. I totally agree with exploring space and trying to figure out the origins of the universe... but why the heck haven't we explored the Oceans to their fullest yet!? I mean we can come up with the technology to put a rover on Mars, but not put something in the depths of the ocean?

(yes, I understand why it's hard to do, but darn it I'm ranting!)

[Timmer1240]

I wonder what computer OS Aliens use I bet its some advanced form of Linux! Alienux

[Oxwivi]

I bet the knowledge the 98% holds is enough to overturn science's outlook on life.

[Oxwivi]

I wonder what computer OS Aliens use I bet its some advanced form of Linux! Alienux
If it's alien OS, than Linus and Unix is not related. I bet someone in Superman's family created Eldows.

[Rasa1111]

To be honest, I never saw the point of exploring the space beyond the geostationary satellite level (it was Stratosphere, I think?). Even at the current rate of population growth, I don't see us overpopulating the Earth before coming to our senses. If it's to make discoveries, try the ocean. 98% of it is still mocking us.

lol, Good points, I cannot disagree.

As interested and fascinated as I am by this stuff...
I can't help but die a little inside whenever I get excited about it all,
we spend billions and trillions of dollars on this research..
Yet we still have 1 in every 8 people on the Planet without simple, clean water to drink.
No way in hell will we ever make it to another world when we can't, as a species.. even take care of our own Planet and People.
But hey... anything that takes our minds off of what really is, you know?
Man we are pathetic.

:rolleyes: to all of us. :???:

[Timmer1240]

I bet the Aliens run Arch

[Rasa1111]

I bet the knowledge the 98% holds is enough to overturn science's outlook on life.

Indeed.

Just 'recently' we have learned that life can exist in environments we once thought completely impossible.
Nuclear reactors, sulfur vents, magma chambers, open vacuum of space, etc...

To quote my old meteorology professor..
"Guy's.. we don't know ****" lol

[Paqman]

I love the way they have a definition of "habitable" that's flexible enough to include planets where you'd die in minutes without some pretty hefty technology. By the same definition the bottom of the Marianas Trench is probably "habitable".

[Oxwivi]

Wait, what?! I know about the other two, but nuclear reactor and vacuum? Care to elaborate?

[Rasa1111]

I love the way they have a definition of "habitable" that's flexible enough to include planets where you'd die in minutes without some pretty hefty technology. By the same definition the bottom of the Marianas Trench is probably "habitable".


lol, Since when did "habitable" mean strictly humans? :confused:

[Rasa1111]

Wait, what?! I know about the other two, but nuclear reactor and vacuum? Care to elaborate?

Just grabbed these quick..
They should be enough to point you to further info..

Fungi living (thriving) in the Chernobyl Reactor..
(RadioTrophic Fungi)
http://www.icr.org/article/life-thrives-amid-chernobyls-leftover/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus
http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/major-biological-discoveryinside-the-chernobyl-reactor/
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=379092

and "water bears" (tardigrades) surviving naked in space..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14690-water-bears-are-first-animal-to-survive-space-vacuum.html
http://www.space.com/5817-creature-survives-naked-space.html

:)

[Oxwivi]

Radiotrophic fungi makes sense, not surprised in the least. I thought you meant tardigrades were exposed to complete vacuum?

[Grenage]

lol, Since when did "habitable" mean strictly humans? :confused:

By that logic, who's to say that every other planet out there isn't 'habitable'.

[Rasa1111]

Radiotrophic fungi makes sense, not surprised in the least. I thought you meant tardigrades were exposed to complete vacuum?

Well,
It is what my memory gathered from my previous readings..
Which upon re-reading...
I see..


In the first test of its kind, researchers exposed the hardy segmented creatures, called "water bears," to the open and harsh vacuum of space, with all its deadly radiation on a spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Many of them survived.
The tardigrades were aboard the FOTON-M3 spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in September 2007 and were exposed to open space conditions, the scientists reported today. They were examined upon return to Earth.http://www.space.com/5817-creature-survives-naked-space.html

Sorry if I used the wrong wording in my first post mentioning it (did i?)
It was a long night stuck under a dome with mostly clouds/rain, and very few photons. lol :P

[Rasa1111]

By that logic, who's to say that every other planet out there isn't 'habitable'.

Yeah,
Whose to say?

Life adapts.
to the extreme.

[Oxwivi]

Well,
It is what my memory gathered from my previous readings..
Which upon re-reading...
I see..

http://www.space.com/5817-creature-survives-naked-space.html

Sorry if I used the wrong wording in my first post mentioning it (did i?)
It was a long night stuck under a dome with mostly clouds/rain, and very few photons. lol :P
How were such tiny critters collected back into storage arouses my curiosity more. I still doubt it had gone out of the space craft's controlled environment.

[t0p]

Well yeah, I was just making the point that while rocket technology is no where near light-speed, it isn't crap either. It's going at like 2,000 mph or something like that. Even if we could travel at the speed of light, the trip to Gliese 581 would take 20 years, and I think they would need some kind of hibernation system so they wouldn't go insane.

You're right, rocket tech speed isn't crap. Apparently Voyager 2 is travelling at 35,000 miles per hour (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070908104530AAuyaGZ). Not bad for interplanetary jaunts I guess. But if you're proposing interstellar travel, 35,000 mph just ain't gonna cut it. According to the same source I just used, it would take Voyager 2 80,730 years to travel the 4 light years to Proxima Centauri (our nearest stellar neighbour, I believe).

You may want to check my maths; but according to my calculations:

c = 186,282 miles per second
= 11,176,920 miles per minute
= 670,615,200 miles per hour
= 16,094,764,800 miles per day
= 5,874,589,152,000 miles per year.

That makes 1 light year 5.8 trillion miles. That's a frakking long way!

The quoted article said the journey to t0p's World would take 300,000 years, using current tech. If we built one of those science fiction "Generation" starships that could go twice as fast as current tech, the journey would take 150,000 years. That's significantly longer than the whole of human history up to the present. Generations of generations of travellers consigned to live and die in a space ship, the vast majority of them would never reach their final destination... who's to say they wouldn't change their minds and start eating babies instead?

Nah, present tech is no good Even near light speed is pretty crap. We need FTL tech, or wormholes, or hyperspace, or warp speed or some such mcguffin.

[Oxwivi]

We need FTL tech, or wormholes, or hyperspace, or warp speed or some such mcguffin.
You forgot to mention hyperspace.

[Rasa1111]

How were such tiny critters collected back into storage arouses my curiosity more. I still doubt it had gone out of the space craft's controlled environment.


Don't know, friend...
Only passing along what the "experts" say about their own experiments.
Their own words, not mine.
Which, Like most of the more interesting science being done today...
Is all we really have to go on.. 'the word of 'experts'. ' lol

p.s.. The manage to collect "star dust" in Aerogel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel without losing it,
So I imagine they could probably handle these creatures, somehow. lol

[t0p]

You forgot to mention hyperspace.

No I didn't.

[Dry Lips]

There is a lot of uncertainty here:



When the team ran the model, they found that Gliese 581d probably can indeed host liquid water if it has a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. Even though the planet is relatively far away from its dim red dwarf parent star, it could be warmed by a greenhouse effect, with daytime heat circulated around the planet by the atmosphere.
[...]
A strong greenhouse effect may warm 581d up substantially, perhaps enough to support liquid water.
[...]
The team, led by scientists from the Laboratoire de Métrologie Dynamique [...]
published their results in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The work remains speculative.”
(Cursive provided by myself )
http://www.space.com/11692-alien-planet-gliese-581d-habitable-life-debate.html

[Oxwivi]

p.s.. The manage to collect "star dust" in Aerogel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel without losing it,
So I imagine they could probably handle these creatures, somehow. lol
That is convincing. I concede.

[Paqman]

lol, Since when did "habitable" mean strictly humans? :confused:

When exobiologists and astronomers use the term "habitable" they do mean for humans. For example, the "habitable zone" around a sun is the region in which liquid water could be present. If you were an organism that didn't use water as a solvent, that would be a meaningless idea.

When they say "habitable" what they really mean is "very vaguely Earthlike" in terms of temperature, pressure, gravity, etc. Obviously they're willing to play pretty loose with things like the chemistry of the place, due to the extreme unlikelihood of an exoplanet having an atmosphere and biosphere compatible with us.

[wojox]

Carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, isn't that what made the insects and plants so large in prehistoric times. So that coupled with the double gravity would make us a slug like culture.

I think I'll stay here for now. :P

[Rasa1111]

That is convincing. I concede.

lol ;)

That aerogel stuff is very interesting.
We have a couple small "discs/pieces"
(think the size of an engagement ring box- both pieces stacked are about that size)
of it up at the observatory , to show kids who come up for science classes or other activities.
I even contemplated buying a piece of my own, just to have because it's so cool. :P
Then I decided against paying $40 ( a 'disc') of mostly air. lol

We actually got it from the business of the famous/or infamous-, depending who you ask,
Bob Lazar [remember him?]
......I tend to believe him these days... but anyway...
He's got some really cool stuff on that site.. lol
If anyone has money to throw away, get some aerogel and be amazed! haha :KS
http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16_17_69&products_id=89

[Grenage]

Carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, isn't that what made the insects and plants so large in prehistoric times. So that coupled with the double gravity would make us a slug like culture.

I think I'll stay here for now. :P

I believe it was a higher oxygen count that allowed insects to be larger; at least, that's the theory. Due to the way insects respire (tubes, not lungs), they can only get so big with the oxygen at its current level.

I can only assume that as we chop more trees and build more roads, we'll have even smaller insects. ;)

[Oxwivi]

Bob Lazar [remember him?]
Remember? Who the hell is he?

[Gremlinzzz]

Remember? Who the hell is he?

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=192555&stc=1&d=1305744685
here he is.left out his story here it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar

[Philsoki]

I remember seeing Bob Lazar on a conspiracy show on SciFi channel years ago. I was so convinced he'd seen and worked on an alien spaceship... It's funny to be reminded of it - Now I think he's a complete fraud. xD

[Rasa1111]

I remember seeing Bob Lazar on a conspiracy show on SciFi channel years ago. I was so convinced he'd seen and worked on an alien spaceship... It's funny to be reminded of it - Now I think he's a complete fraud. xD


lol, funny..
I used to think he was a fraud.. and was not convinced.
until I really started getting into this stuff and researching more and more..
Now, 7 or so years later..
I have changed my 'tune'.. lol :P

:KS

[Nerotriple6]

A planet 20 light years away is the first outside the solar system to be officially declared habitable by European scientists.
Only habitable by European scientists?

Meeh.. wish I was a scientist then..:P