Posted on 10/01/2010 3:22:54 AM PDT by tlb
An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.
Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.
Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a 'suspicious' signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g.
The remarkable coincidence adds another layer of mystery to the announcement last night that scientists had discovered another planet in the system: Gliese 581g - the most Earth-like planet ever found.
Dr Bhathal's discovery had come just months before astronomers announced that they had found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same star 20 light years away. This planet was called Gliese 581e.
He went on: 'We found this very sharp signal, sort of a laser lookalike thing which is the sort of thing we’re looking for - a very sharp spike. And that is what we found. So that was the excitement about the whole thing.'
For months after his discovery Dr Bhathal scanned the skies for a second signal to see whether it was just a glitch in his instrumentation but his search came to nothing.
But the discovery of Earth-like planets around Gliese 581 - both 581e and 581d, which was in the habitable zone - has also caught the public imagination.
Documentary-maker RDF and social-networking site Bebo used a radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful focused beam of information - 500 messages from the public in the form of radiowaves - to Gliese 581.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Five hundred messages- randomly selected from Youtube comment threads. Imagine the conclusion that an alien civilization might draw from that.
'Look Zarg, a civilization populated entirely by unruly, boorish teenaged boys!'
20 light years may as well be 2 million, at our tech level it would takes hundreds of thousands of years to get a probe or ship there. Voyager 1 probe would take take 76,000 years to reach Proxima B. If the probe could be made as fast as Helios 2, it would take 19,000 years.. and that’s 4.5 light years distance.
I was 5 when the Architects of Fear first aired in ‘63. Scared the bejesus out of me. Couldn’t sleep for days. To this day the “alien” they created out of one of their own is one of the scariest ideas I have ever heard of and one of the scariest things I have ever seen. That episode is a classic.
"Earth-like" my arse!
orbiting a red dwarf star
tidally locked to Gliese 581
scorching heat of the sunward side
entire atmosphere frozen on the night side
Ponds and Fleischman of the new Millennium.
I've been convinced for many years, it's only a matter of time until it's discovered we're not the only planet with life.
For the better, I thought. It just wouldn't have worked in the movie.
Another fact is, with new technology ramping up, planets orbiting similar stars with similar orbits as earth are being discovered and cataloged...In the coming months and years, there will be tens of thousands more discovered.
The flat earth folks, will likely be spending all their time attempting to discredit each and everyone.
From the original “Lathe of Heaven” 1980
“Okay George, we’re going to take on a really big one this time. Something that has been wasting a lot of the world’s valuable time. Racism. When I say Antwerp, I want you to dream your world where everyone is completely integrated.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxsraF6bprQ&feature=related
BUMP
“terminator ring could easily harbor life on this planet.”
Could be, but it is not “earthlike”.
But we here on earth still have a rocket ship mentality.
The search for life outside earth is two sided. Other advanced civilizations could have mastered interstellar travel hundreds of millions of years ago.
We are so primitive here on earth, after what 200,000 years or whatever number humans have been on earth, humans still haven't even traveled to our closest neighbor planet.
That's pretty damn primitive by any description.
Could be, but it is not “earthlike
lol...There are trillions of planets waiting to be discovered in the universe.
Just a guess, but I'd say more than a few, "non-earthlike planets, harbor life.
I think you think I'm thinking something that you think I could be thinking but which I'm not thinking.
oooooK
Say we started with a pair of watchmakers, after two months, when the population really began to grow, the Democrats would get them human rights and teach them to vote Democrat. Then we would never get rid of the watchmakers or the Democrats.
LOL. What Southern orifice did you pull that out of?
With a mass only 93 times that of Jupiter, AB Doradus C, a companion to AB Doradus A, is the smallest known star undergoing nuclear fusion in its core.[106] For stars with similar metallicity to the Sun, the theoretical minimum mass the star can have, and still undergo fusion at the core, is estimated to be about 75 times the mass of Jupiter.[107][108]
The sun's presence has NOTHING to do with with Jupiter or Saturn not being Red Dwarfs.
If either Jupiter or Saturn had the mass required, which they evidently DON'T - there's nothing preventing them from being a companion star to the Sun, as AB Doradus C is to AB Doradus A.
Me too, although he can hold the lesbianism.
Did you like Fire Upon the Deep?
I found the concept of a biological threat to a “software monster” fascinating.
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