Habitable Planet Found?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in ScienceThe temperature could be just right for liquid water. And where there’s liquid water, there could be life.
An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date.The planet has a radius only 50 percent larger than Earth and is very likely to contain liquid water on its surface. [...]
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” said Stiphane Udry from the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and lead-author of the paper in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
“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,” he said.
“Liquid water is critical to life as we know it and 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 extra-terrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” added Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University, France.
Very cool.
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April 24th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I thought anything that close in to its sun would be locked (like our moon and those of Saturn and Jupiter), one hemisphere permanently facing the sun, and too hot, one side facing away and all the water there as ice.
April 24th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Where did we get that it was non-rotational?
April 24th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I’ve never heard that. I thought Mercury and Venus do the same spin we do, except much quicker.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Actually, neither Mercury nor Venus are completely tidally locked with the Sun. In fact, Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction to its orbit around the Sun, though its rotational period is slightly longer than its orbital period. Mercury has an orbital period that is 1.5 times its rotational period.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
So when do we leave?
April 24th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Soon Mike. Soon.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:28 am
But you missed the point here Justin. Where there is water there is oil!
April 25th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Yea…and where there is oil there is greedy bastards.
April 25th, 2007 at 10:43 am
And all we can do is stare at it for awhile.
April 25th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Don’t stare for too long! We might offend it… then we’ll have yet another activist group. But hey, that’s America!
April 25th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Ok we all are wondering how this can be a habitable planet and the answer to that is that the star it orbits is a red dwarf star which is much cooler than our star so for the planet to be habitable it has to be very close.
Also all planets rotate and so does this one however 1 year for this planet is about 14 days
April 25th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Sweet! So I’d be almost 140 THOUSAND YEARS OLD!
April 26th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Actually Mercury’s day is about 2/3 of its year, 58.7 earth days to rotate vs. 88 earth days to orbit the sun.
A day on Venus is 243 earth days, a year on Venus is 224.7 earth days.