Munich, April 24: An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date. Posted on 04/24/2007 1:41:01 PM PDT by Sopater
Munich, April 24: 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.
The research team used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) 3.6-m telescope to discover the super-Earth, which has a mass about five times that of the Earth and orbits a red dwarf already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet.
Astronomers believe there is a strong possibility in the presence of a third planet with a mass about eight times that of the Earth in the system.
However, unlike our Earth, this planet takes only 13 days to complete one orbit round its star. It is also 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun.
However, since its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid!
“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 Stéphane 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.
According to the research team, the host star, Gliese 581, is among the 100 closest stars to us, located only 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra (“the Scales”).
The star has a mass only one third that of the Sun. Such red dwarfs are at least 50 times intrinsically fainter than the Sun and are the most common stars in our Galaxy. Among the 100 closest stars to the Sun, 80 belong to this class.
“Red dwarfs are ideal targets for the search for such planets because they emit less light, and the habitable zone is thus much closer to them than it is around the Sun. Any planets that lie in this zone are more easily detected with the radial-velocity method, the most successful in detecting exoplanets,” said Xavier Bonfils, a co-worker from Lisbon University.
Bureau Report
The thing is, unless it was launched from Antarctica or the poles, the radiation it would put into the air was estimated to kill a lot of people indiscriminately around the world.
relativity....
Well, you’d have to build and launch the thing from orbit, I think.
What makes us think that the Terra Nova will be uninhabited?
Sounds like a real paradise....
Their definition of *habitable* is waaaay different than mine.
I don't know, I was just going by 1.5 times per the article............
The toll on the human body has got to be more than simply weighing more. A 100 lb person weighing 220 lb could still walk around, but it would seem that all the weight bearing joints would be under far more stress and would deteriorate much more quickly.
Must get pretty windy...
Start launching all liberals today. We must get them there.
The last time I looked, the Earth was rocky AND covered with oceans. Why do they think it must be one or the other, but not both?
They need a model to predict this?
They're just covering all the bases. That way, no matter what they find, they can say they were right.
"Prepare to jump."
Because our planet depends on oil like a crack whore and with the likelyhood this planet never had any carbon based lifeform to create oil it dictakes that we will never make an effort to go there.
Its all about oil, take that figure out of any current event equation and the sum will change.
And the equation of having to have oil is what is castrating us from going to space.
So what about Godebert's question? What effect would this have on atmospheric pressure, assuming an Earth-like atmosphere since it's supposed to be habitable.
Not by us, but it is the closest thing we've found, so far.
5X the mass Earth,but only 2X the gravity....
Astronauts launching on the Shuttle take about 3 times the force of gravity, fighter pilots going through sharp turns take 9.
No - we need to send him with a documentary team
Lauria David, Michael Moore, Bil Moyers, Dan Rather
and some Senators with proconsular power such as
Kerry, Kennedy, and Schumer
If so, I'd be interested in what it would cost to send a probe. I know ... it would take generations to get the data, but so what? I say we should have a look around if we can.
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