Earth 2? ...

[MinionZombie]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070424/tts-uk-space-planet-ca02f96.html

Pretty cool stuff, it's things like this that makes me wish you could take trips into the future and see how things work out, what happens with stuff like this ... or that when you die, you get to see what happens for the rest of the future ... but kinda sped up and picking out the key points.

Just imagine if it really was/is an Earth-like planet ... it'd be freaky (yet most likely very, very unlikely) if it was kind of a 'twin' to us and they were just discovering us as an "earth like planet" to them...*getting all Red Dwarfy in my mind - the TV show I mean).

Still, cool stuff.

[Danny]

or maybe there looking through a black hole at earth in the future?:|

sorry, to much ray bradbury theatre lately.

mini woot for my 5500th post....which has no relevance to anything whatsoever :lol:

[bassman]

It IS Earth 2. It's being created just like it was in "Hitchhiker's Guide".:D

[capncnut]

For all of you that want the info right here.


Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface. The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581 (http://jumk.de/astronomie/img/gliese-581.jpg), which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile. They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.

"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this 'super-Earth' lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result. "Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or covered with oceans."

Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University, added: "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it." He believes the planet may now become a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life. These missions will put telescopes in space that can discern the tell-tale light "signatures" that might be associated with biological processes. The observatories would seek to identify trace atmospheric gases such as methane, and even markers for chlorophyll, the pigment in Earth plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.

The exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun - is the smallest yet found, and completes a full orbit of its parent star in just 13 days.

EXOPLANET GLIESE 581 C:

Mass: Five times Earth's mass
Orbit: 13 days
Temperature: 0C - 40C
Distance: 20.5 light years
Constellation: Libra
Indeed, it is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to our Sun. However, given that the host star is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet nevertheless lies in the "habitable zone", the region around a star where water could be liquid.

Gliese 581 was identified at the European Southern Observatory facility at La Silla in the Atacama Desert. To make their discovery, researchers used a very sensitive instrument that can measure tiny changes in the velocity of a star as it experiences the gravitational tug of a nearby planet. Astronomers are stuck with such indirect methods of detection because current telescope technology struggles to image very distant and faint objects - especially when they orbit close to the glare of a star.

The Gliese 581 system has now yielded three planets: the new super-Earth, a 15 Earth-mass planet orbiting even closer to the parent star, and an eight Earth-mass planet that lies further out. The latest discovery has created tremendous excitement among scientists. Of the more than 200 exoplanets so far discovered, a great many are Jupiter-like gas giants that experience blazing temperatures because they orbit close to hot stars. The Gliese 581 super-Earth is in what scientists call the "Goldilocks Zone" where temperatures "are just right" for life to have a chance to exist.

Commenting on the discovery, Alison Boyle, the curator of astronomy at London's Science Museum, said: "Of all the planets we've found around other stars, this is the one that looks as though it might have the right ingredients for life. "It's 20 light-years away and so we won't be going there anytime soon, but with new kinds of propulsion technology that could change in the future. And obviously we'll be training some powerful telescopes on it to see what we can see," she told BBC News. "'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask."

[Danny]

what do you reckon would happen if nasa sent a probe there though and there was life but only as advanced as neaderthal level?

my guess is nuke the place then mine to too the core, sad but hey, were humans its what our speices does best.....like the predator but with better outfits.:lol:

[capncnut]

what do you reckon would happen if nasa sent a probe there though and there was life but only as advanced as neaderthal level?
I have no idea, that place would probably take many thousands of years to reach. Will NASA even bother with a probe?

[Danny]

now thats the conspiracy thoery right there, were the aliens probing other planets!:lol:

[MinionZombie]

Probing them right up the brown eye...:elol:

If we forget the boring science bit that crushes all dreams and fanboyish glee, "they" couldn't get away with nuking the planet and mining it, there'd be too many questions from people on earth, they couldn't get away with it. :sneaky:

[Neil]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070424/tts-uk-space-planet-ca02f96.html

Pretty cool stuff, it's things like this that makes me wish you could take trips into the future and see how things work out, what happens with stuff like this ... or that when you die, you get to see what happens for the rest of the future ... but kinda sped up and picking out the key points.

Sort of like Sky+ then where you can pause live tv and fast forward etc? So you want Life+? :)


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070424/tts-uk-space-planet-ca02f96.html

Just imagine if it really was/is an Earth-like planet ... it'd be freaky (yet most likely very, very unlikely) if it was kind of a 'twin' to us and they were just discovering us as an "earth like planet" to them...*getting all Red Dwarfy in my mind - the TV show I mean).

Still, cool stuff.

God I hate news like this... There could be a world there with rivers and lakes and seas... And we'll never see it... Our children will never see it... It will be thousands of years probably before anyone sees it :( And it's VERY close in the scheme of things, only 20 light-years or so... It's basically just outside our front door in cosmic terms, yet an impossible distance away :(

[MinionZombie]

Sort of like Sky+ then where you can pause live tv and fast forward etc? So you want Life+?

Hell yeah, that's be freakin' sweet!

Tell me about it, all these super cool things that'll happen and we won't be around to see them ... makes me think about Futurama ... makes me think what will the Year 3000 really be like? :rockbrow:

If only there was Life+ ... ahhhh ... one can only dream ...

[capncnut]

God I hate news like this... There could be a world there with rivers and lakes and seas... And we'll never see it... Our children will never see it... It will be thousands of years probably before anyone sees it :( And it's VERY close in the scheme of things, only 20 light-years or so... It's basically just outside our front door in cosmic terms, yet an impossible distance away :(
I know man, crushing ain't it?

[Tricky]

I bet if theres intelligent life on there and they know about us,they'll be saying "oh crap,those cranks on that bloody rock over yonder have spotted us,best get some defences built before they come and wreck the place...." :lol:

[_liam_]

or "engage the engines, move us another ten light years away"

"i dont trust those japanese"

[MinionZombie]

And if there was life equal to us there, and if we did meet, no doubt the politicians of both would end up dragging us all into some sort of war with both sides refusing to share information with each other, there'd be a whole load of ass going on probably...really piss on the whole parade. :rolleyes:

[capncnut]

Damn straight, I don't want to pay interplanetary tax on a bag of weed that grows on another planet. £500 an ounce of Ganymedian Red? You're having a f**king laugh mate! :eek:

[MinionZombie]

Only Capn could go from new planet to the intricacies of the interplanetary blunt market. :rolleyes::p:)

And another idea - with all the ifs, what if there was an equal race of people over there, but they were either behind us or in front of us development wise? If they were behind, you just know it wouldn't be a case of leave them to it, we'd end up speeding them along, or perhaps it'd be the other way around ... or if it was the other way around, you just know the politicians would be weary of them as we would be the ones on the back foot, and prime for being taken over - if the others even wanted to do that, but you know how politicians think...

[Dommm]

Only Capn could go from new planet to the intricacies of the interplanetary blunt market. :rolleyes::p:)

And another idea - with all the ifs, what if there was an equal race of people over there, but they were either behind us or in front of us development wise? If they were behind, you just know it wouldn't be a case of leave them to it, we'd end up speeding them along, or perhaps it'd be the other way around ... or if it was the other way around, you just know the politicians would be weary of them as we would be the ones on the back foot, and prime for being taken over - if the others even wanted to do that, but you know how politicians think...


Or maybe we will just end up in an argument about which religion is better, another group of sucidial bombings to worry about. and imagine the racial tensions we would have....

[capncnut]

Imagine if they spoke the same language and had the exact same Bible as us but with edits like 'The Testament According To Matthew Of Earth'. That would pretty much seal that debate. :D

[MinionZombie]

Speaking of all things spacey, I just saw on ITV News a clip of Stephen Hawking being taken on one of those zero-G flights so he could experience weightlessness ... it was pretty cool, just brought a smile to my face to see the bloke so blatantly loving it. :)

[Terran]

Imagine if they spoke the same language had the exact same Bible as us but with edits like 'The Testament According To Matthew Of Earth'. That would pretty much seal that debate. :D

Or the entire planet practices some similiar form of vodoo that we see here on earth....but they do it successfully....and on a regular basis raise the dead to do chores for them.....


Disgruntled employees commonly make vodoo dolls to put curses ontheir bosses.....

[capncnut]

Disgruntled employees commonly make vodoo dolls to put curses ontheir bosses...
I've thought about making one or two myself. :elol:

[EvilNed]

I'd point out how totally pointless this discovery seems, but I know Terran would go bonkers if I did.

[Dawg]

So to measure really long distances, people use a unit called a light year. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Therefore, a light second is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or:

186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year

A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers)

So, the planet is: 120,246,768,000,000 miles away! (Over 120 trillion miles!)

Well what are we waiting for? Let's go!! :D

Reference Page: http://www.howstuffworks.com/question94.htm

:dead: Dawg

[Terran]

I'd point out how totally pointless this discovery seems, but I know Terran would go bonkers if I did.

:D

Nah Id agree.....The only thing that will be interesting is to see how much we can find out about the planet by looking at it through telescopes and other devices.....


...*sigh*...

Heres hoping for the "singularity" so I can maybe one day see places like this :D

[Neil]

I'd point out how totally pointless this discovery seems, but I know Terran would go bonkers if I did.

How is proving at least planets of earth'esque size exist, pointless?

[EvilNed]

How is proving at least planets of earth'esque size exist, pointless?

Because we discovered it through a telescope. It's like discovering a new form of deep sea bacteria with a magnifying glass, looking down from sea level! Tell him, Terran!

[Dommm]

I dont know, I dont think its pointless, it gives us a directtion to point our rockets in when we are ready to travel that far.

[Terran]

Theres certain things we should be able to tell and it will be interesting....
and help prove concepts and theories ....or stir up new concepts and theories....

But it seems we will be very limited in the way we can view and interact with this planet....

So unlike things we learn about our own solar system this seems it will be practically useless because we will never be able to get anything there.....at least in the conceivable future


I mean....who didnt already believe that there were earth sized planets out there....:)