New Earth-like planet in 'Goldilocks zone' discovered

[muriel_volestrangler]

A team of planet hunters spotted the alien world circling a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, 20 light years away.

The planet is in the "Goldilocks zone" of space around a star where surface temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form.

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

If confirmed, the planet would be the most Earth-like that has ever been discovered in another solar system and the first strong contender for a habitable one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/29/earth-like-planet-gliese-581g

The caveat is that it keeps one side always facing the star, so that part of it will be too hot for liquid water, part too cold. But as the article says, the region between the two may be good.

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Shadowjack, please pick up the white courtesy phone...

(5 obscure reference points up for grabs :) )

[Canuckistanian]

2. That's right in our neighborhood

Remember Gliesians, the secret is - keep banging those rocks together.

[babsbunny]

3. i'm goin' home.......

Never want to come back to this Planet...........

[BadgerKid]

4. They should call it Abydos.

Now if only we had a stargate....

[comtec]

5. I was actually thinking Vulcan

Abydos was much farther away

[Phoonzang]

6. This solar system has been getting astronomers excited for years.

Guess they finally hit the jackpot. I suspect this news will be eclipsed within a few months by the Kepler telescope's discoveries however.

[Ian David]

7. Goldilocks Planet May Be Dawn of 'Second Age of Discovery'

Astronomers are over the moon after hearing of a new "Goldilocks" planet that may be capable of sustaining basic life.
Twenty light years away in the Libra constellation, this celestial treasure, called Gliese 581g and depicted in this NASA/National Science Foundation image, has the perfect conditions for water: not too hot and not too cold, but just right, as in the Goldilocks fairy tale. "This is really the first Goldilocks planet," remarked one of the planet's discoverers, R. Paul Butler. And it's likely the first of many.

The report notes, "That a system harboring a potentially habitable planet has been found this nearby, and this soon in the relatively early history of precision surveys, indicates that , the fraction of stars with potentially habitable planets, is likely to be substantial." It concludes that they could very well be "on the threshold of a second Age of Discovery."

The findings must now be confirmed by other astronomers, to make sure it's not a complete fluke. Then we can all start designing rocket ships to get us there.

More:
http://www.towleroad.com/2010/09/goldilocks-planet-may-be-dawn-of-second-age-of-discovery.html

[txlibdem]

13. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

That's what the Interstellar Cops should be saying right about now.

The planet orbits the sun every 37 days!

One side of the planet is gravitationally locked to face the sun, the other side to forever face the coldness of space. So the only potential areas on the planet where liquid water could exist would be in the boundary between boiling hot dayside and freezing nightside.

[Ian David]

14. Also thinking that a planet 3-4 times the mass of Earth would have a very dense atmosphere. n/t

[txlibdem]

17. That might not be necessarily bad

But since the planet has no rotation (it's gravitationally locked to the star just like Mercury is) that may mean the atmosphere would boil away on the sunward "day" side and freeze and fall to the ground on the "night" side. At the boundary between the two there could either be a nice balance between the two extremes, a peaceful valley between opposing hells. Or there could be a chaotic nightmare of hurricanes (presuming atmosphere even exists there), lightning storms, possibly falling debris kicked up by thousand mile per hour winds, not to mention the thousand mile per hour winds themselves. Or there could be effectively no atmosphere at all. Liquid water could exist in some narrow band between the two but I just don't expect there to be anything resembling the "atmosphere" that we would recognize so if there is life I'd expect to see aquatic species rather than land-dwellers.

Land dwellers may find the gravity too debilitating there but we could wear robotic exoskeletons to keep us mobile. Or just live under the water, which would require some sort of liquid breathing apparatus like the US Navy uses for deep sea divers.

I just can't imagine anyone would want to book a vaca there... But I'd like humanity to be able to go there to see it first hand, whether that be by space gate or warp drive or BSG-like FTL jump drive or dimensional shift drive.

[Ian David]

18. Mercury isn't gravitationally locked. We used to think it was. n/t

[qazplm]

8. wouldnt the temp extremes

make for some pretty bad weather, even in the "middle?"

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. But who knows what 'bad weather' is like for another lifeform?

Bad weather on the surface may not mean much to an octopus on the ocean floor. And we really can't know if life capable of sending radio waves etc. has to develop in an atmosphere, rather than inside water.

[qazplm]

10. I dont know

I was speaking about weather, not about what conditions would be underwater or underground.

We don't know anything about anything in this area that isn't on Earth so no, no one will ever be able to say never.

However, I think it would be, at the very least, challenging for a highly technologically advanced civilization to develop underwater solely. I also think basic physics would suggest sending radio waves through water and then through atmosphere at power levels necessary to send out a decent signal of any strength would be tough to do.

At an rate, I wouldn't be shocked if life were found, where there is water, like Europa, or Callisto, or Mars, or even in the atmosphere of Jupiter, there is certainly a chance for life.

[Ian David]

15. Most scientists believe that you can't develop technology unless you can develop fire.

Although primitive cave-merpeople might sit around a campfire made with phosphorous or flourine under the ocean.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. That's a fair point

I guess it's a question of "manipulation of large amounts of energy". Maybe they could do something with undersea vents; but not as portable a a burning stick ...

[txlibdem]

19. Was it fire or domesticating the animals that was the "magic bullet" that drove our development

I always thought that it was domesticating livestock and work animals that truly freed us from the toiling for sustenance and gave us a buffer/safety net to survive droughts and other shocks to the system.

How could an octopus benefit from domesticating the crabs and sea horses? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps that would give new meaning to the term "fish farm."

[Ian David]

20. Ants have domesticated aphids and fungus.

If they had opposalble thumbs and fire, they'd probably domesticate us.

[txlibdem]

21. Again with the fire

You're really set on that as the spark that started our civilization, aren't you.

If ants had intelligence they would have capitalized a bit more on the aphids. I don't agree with the fungus part, however. That is merely an adaptation to an untapped food source. Did the dung beetle domesticate cattle? What do you mean, no! They eat the cow droppings, ants eat the product of the fungus' activity. I don't see a civilization there.

There are numerous examples of one creature capitalizing on the innate behavior of another species. Dolphins corral a group of fish by working together, herding the fish by releasing air bubbles, and they narrow the corral progressively over time then take turns zipping into the collected fish for a meal. Whales cooperatively breach and use the same bubble-netting described previously to corral their food, small fishes or krill. Wolves stage themselves along a route that the pack will force the herding prey to take and when a wolf tires of the chase there is another one waiting to join in the hunt. I do not see the ants herding the aphids as any different than these behaviors.

Yes, fire is one of the things that set us apart from the animals. So is tool use. Monkeys and Gorillas use tools, as do crows and other bird species. Here is a link that I thought interesting: http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/tools.htm

But is fire REQUIRED for a being to be considered intelligent, or for a grouping of life forms to be called a "civilization." I do not believe it is. What if there were volcanic vents that could be used to cook food and later to melt or form metals into useful tools or parts? Would a person need to develop fire? What if the temperature variation between summer and winter or day and night were not significant? We here on Earth have a number of challenges that fire helped us overcome: cold at night and in the winter, cook food so it lasts longer or has fewer pathogens, scare away predators. What would the Glieseans need fire if their planet had no axial tilt and no seasons?

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. Ants bring leaves for the fungus to feed on

You may have a similar experience at several locations in Central and South America, but many species live as far north as Oklahoma. However, this ant, known as the Leafcutting Ant, does not eat leaves. The leaves it carries to its nest are fed to a special type of fungus that these ants grow. The species of this harvest fungus depends on the species of the ant. The fungus "garden" is located deep underground within the ant colony. The average ant nest contains several of these gardens, each with an average life span of about 3-5 weeks. As leaves reach the nest, they are cut up into a gooey mulch and licked clean of all other fungus spores that may interfere with the growth of the harvest fungus. Licking the leaves also helps get rid of natural antibiotics. Next, in a clean terrace within the nest, the plant matter is laid out and covered with fecal droppings. The fecal matter acts as fertilizer and breaks down the proteins that the fungus can not. Finally, a piece of fungal hyphae (the growing, nutrient-using part of the fungus) is placed on top of the plant matter. As it grows, a part called the gongylidia (gong-ee-lid-ee-ah) of the fungus is fed to the members of the colony.

http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/ants/leafcutter/index.html

[txlibdem]

23. Yes, I know that

Dung beetles form clumps of dung into balls and roll them across the desert floor. So what? Spiders inject a toxin that liquifies the insides of its prey. Beavers damn creeks with mud and fallen trees and twigs.

What is your point with all this ant talk? Are you saying that ants are sentient?

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Ants cultivate the fungus

Their behaviour is considerably more complex than rolling balls around. Your earlier post gave the impression that they just eat the fungus when they find it growing.

[Ian David]

26. Dungbeetles don't feed the elephants so they'll make dung.

Nobody is saying ants are sentient.

[txlibdem]

27. So you are saying that ants are on the path toward sentience?

Or are you saying that since ants "feed" the fungus that is equal to early man domesticating the cow and the ox therefore, by the transitive property, domesticating animals is meaningless as a measure of intelligence/sentience/civilization?

Single sentence posts make it infuriatingly difficult to figure out exactly what your position is.

Are you just trying to boost your post count? Do you even HAVE a point? Sheesh!

[Ian David]

28. No. n/t

[txlibdem]

29. I have to thank you

for listening to my complaint about those one-sentence posts and changing your behavior in response. That you now post a zero-sentence response is unfortunate but maybe there is hidden progress there that I am not yet aware of.

[Ian David]

31. .

[Ian David]

25. First fungal farmers of the Americas

First fungal farmers of the Americas
Ants cultivate fungus in gardens. ... Think of it this way: After an ant domesticates a fungus, that fungus changes genetically, becoming different from the ...
http://whyfiles.org/shorties/ant_farm.html

Ant-fungus mutualism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-fungus_mutualism

[TheMadMonk]

11. Not necessarily.

With a tidally locked planet the weather system should be pretty damned simple: One hot pole, one cold pole. A constant fountain of warm/hot air rising at the point closest to the sun, a high level hot jetstream which always goes coldward, a descending column of cooling air at the poles and cold, wet dense air at ground level to complete the circuit.

Topological features would make for a little local weather, but the worldwide pattern would be very simple overall. The main feature being a constant hotward wind at ground level.

It might be fun to see if any climate modellers have ever plugged in such a tidally locked planet for funsies.

One thing not addressed is that the cold side temperature would have to stay above freezing or eventually all moisture would freeze out on the night side which would not be so wonderful for life.

From cold to hot I suspect the climate bands would be cold rains, fogs, light dark interface, rising fogs, thunderstorms and finally desert at the hot pole. And each would be its own ecological zone with strongly typed inhabitants that never venture far towards the hot or the cold. Evolution will be a very slow thing I suspect.

[TheMadMonk]

12. Found one. Seems like the highest windspeeds would be about 200kph.

And I was wrong on the bullseye pattern. Corolis forces still apply. Think a cold Venus.

[txlibdem]

30. I was wrong about the planet Mercury

Hmmm. That's a very strange rotation cycle that Mercury has. Three planetary rotations for every 2 trips around the sun. Maybe our mystery planet has a similar situation - if so the chance of any life (or atmosphere or liquid water) are about nil IMO.