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Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard, made the claim that we are alone in the universe after an analysis of the 500 planets discovered so far showed all were hostile to life. Dr Smith said the extreme conditions found so far on planets discovered outside out Solar System are likely to be the norm, and that the hospitable conditions on Earth could be unique. “We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it,” he said. He pointed to stars such as HD10180,...

New data suggest the confirmation of the exoplanet Gliese 581g and the best candidate so far of a potential habitable exoplanet. The nearby star Gliese 581 is well known for having four planets with the outermost planet, Gliese 581d, already suspected habitable. This will be the first time evidence for any two potential habitable exoplanets orbiting the same star. Gliese 581g will be included, together with Gliese 667Cc, Kepler-22b, HD85512, and Gliese 581d, in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog of the PHL @ UPR Arecibo as the best five objects of interest for Earth-like exoplanets. Doubts about the existence of Gliese...

The recent discovery of Gliese 581g, an alien planet in the habitable zone of another star, has been an exciting development for scientists probing the galaxy for signs of extraterrestrial life. At least one claim of a possible signal from the planet has already surfaced – and been met with harsh skepticism among the science community. Following the Sept. 29 announcement of the discovery of Gliese 581g, astronomer Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, claimed to have detected a suspicious pulse of light nearly two years ago, that came from the same area of the galaxy...

These questions have been with us since our earliest forays into thinking about the sky, the stars and the wandering planets. The atomists of ancient Greece were convinced that the Universe was infinite and must therefore have an infinity of infinite worlds. In 1277 Bishop Tempier of Paris claimed that God could have created other worlds. Many scholars were unconvinced and argued that even if He could, He would choose not too. In 1600 Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for various heresies and it is likely that his advocacy of a plurality of inhabited worlds did not win...

Despite the doubts raised recently over the existence of the potentially habitable alien world Gliese 581g, the planet's co-discoverer is standing behind his find. Steven Vogt, leader of the team that detected Gliese 581g, said he respects the work of the researchers who questioned the planet's existence yesterday (Oct. 12). He said he cannot comment on the scientists' results, since he hasn't seen their data. But he has confidence in his own team's conclusions... Vogt added that he looks forward to reading the other team's results when they're published in a peer-reviewed journal. He's not necessarily expecting Gliese 581g to...

If it seems like a new extrasolar planet is discovered every week these days, that's because there is. In fact, the rate is actually faster than one per week -- 70 have been discovered thus far this year alone, bringing the overall tally of confirmed exoplanets at 494. At that pace we very well might hit exoplanet number 500 before the end of this month... The first definitive exoplanet was confirmed in 1992, and it's taken us almost two decades to cross the 500 threshold. But given the drastic uptick in discoveries and the increased scientific emphasis on exoplanet discovery,...

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...

An Earth-size planet has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold -- comfortable enough for life to exist, researchers announced Wednesday. If confirmed, the exoplanet, named Gliese 581g, would be the first Earth-like world found residing in a star's habitable zone -- a region where a planet's temperature could sustain liquid water on its surface.[Illustration of planet Gliese 581g.] And the planet's discoverers are optimistic about the prospects for finding life there. "Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would...

WASHINGTON – Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right. Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere. It's just right. Just like Earth. "This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

US astronomers said Wednesday they have discovered an Earth-sized planet that they think might be habitable, orbiting a nearby star, and believe there could be many more planets like it in space. The planet, found by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is orbiting in the middle of the "habitable zone" of the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which means it could have water on its surface. Liquid water and an atmosphere are necessary for a planet to possibly sustain life, even it it might not be a great place to live,...

Researchers are racing to find the first planet that might support life as we know it.Gliese 876 is a modest star, just one-third the mass of our sun and only 15 light-years away, but it has a history-making planetary system all its own. In 1998 a team led by Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley detected the first sign of something interesting there: a giant planet, twice the mass of Jupiter, circling Gliese 876 once every two months, its gravity yanking the star back and forth at the speed of a jet plane. Three years later the...

« Kepler’s dust cover has now been jettisoned, meaning the search for extrasolar ‘Earths’ is not long from commencing. The cover stayed in place for so long because the spacecraft’s photometer had to make measurements of electronic noise that will later have to be removed from the science data. Mission engineers will now continue with the calibration process for several weeks using images of actual stars. Our debates over the ‘rare Earth’ hypothesis will be getting firm data in short order because of Kepler. Three years from now, having had time to detect terrestrial-class planets in the habitable zone...

« We’ve already speculated here that if the Kepler mission finds few Earth-like planets in the course of its investigations, the belief that life is rare will grow. But let’s be optimists and speculate on the reverse: What if Kepler pulls in dozens, even hundreds, of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of their respective stars? In that case, the effort to push on to study the atmospheres of such planets would receive a major boost, aiding the drive to launch a terrestrial planet hunter with serious spectroscopic capabilities some time in the next decade.Budget problems? Let’s fold Darwin...

HATFIELD, England – In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life. ... An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet "extraordinary."

When ET phoned home in 1982, a whole generation dreamed of finding extra-terrestrial life. One inspired moviegoer was Australia’s eccentric science minister Kim Carr. Today he launched a bizarre scheme encouraging citizens to send messages into outer space with the hope of discovering other beings. And, by logging on to a website, hundreds have already sent missives to Gliese 581d, the only know planet that - since it resembles Earth – could support life. Some have asked aliens to help find lost socks, while others invited non-earthlings from planet Gliese 581d over for a cup of tea. In what is...

Messages from Earth will be sent into space as part of National Science Week. People can visit the Hello From Earth website to post text-like message that will be transmitted to Gliese 581d - the nearest earth-like planet outside our solar system. Gliese 581d was discovered in April 2007. It is eight times the size of Earth and 20 light years away. The project is already proving popular, with the website receiving 26,000 hits in the first five minutes - crashing the system for a short time. The messages will be sent from the Canberra Deep Space Complex at Tidbinbilla....

PITY the poor inhabitants of Gliese 581d; some day in 20 years' time, the planet -- which was discovered in 2007 and is theoretically inhabitable (a bit like Los Angeles) -- is going to be hit by a tsunami of spam. Our pollies have been among eager earthlings who've signed up at HelloFromEarth.net to have a message beamed at the planet. Science Minister Kim Carr did his bit to set the tone with this sentiment: "Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth. These messages express our people's dreams for the future. We want to share these dreams with...

Recent discoveries by planet-hunters have made astronomers more optimistic that the universe has plenty of rocky, Earth-like planets that occupy the "habitable zone" around stars. Since the discovery in 1995 of the first "exoplanet," astronomers have found more than 300 such worlds, almost all of them Jupiter-size "gas giants," the easiest to detect with today's technology. There has been speculation that such giant planets may migrate closer to their parent stars and, en route, obliterate any smaller, Earth-like bodies. But that seems a bit less likely with the announcement last week by Swiss astronomer Michel Mayor and colleagues of the...

HATFIELD, England – In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life. "The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,'" said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland....

A month ago, there was news that washed over astrobiologists like high tide in the Bay of Fundy: the existence of a possibly habitable planet around the nearby star Gliese 581. It was certainly one of the most encouraging discoveries in the whole planet-hunting enterprise. And it got me thinking about the big picture. In particular, how many such worlds are still beyond our telescopic ken, sequestered in the rarefied gloom of the cosmos?