"The New Earth"

[Supercheese]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=450467&in_page_id=1965

I don't think that much will come of this, but I find things like this fascinating.

The article is rather careful not to state certainties (with liberal use of "may", "perhaps", and other ambiguities) but from a stellar perspective, 20 light years is quite close.

I bet the folks at SETI are going bonkers over this. Although it is beyond me how they can even see something 120 trillion miles away, let alone measure things like temperature and mass, if at least some of the things are true, and if by some celestial change this is a "Class M" planet, then SETI may not be a pointless endeavor. Who knows?

I personally think it would be absolutely boss if there were extraterrestrial life forms out there (non-sentient is fine too). However, nothing can be said one way or the other at the moment, and that is not apt to change any time soon. The astronomical distances involved are also a huge hurdle to overcome if anything is to come from this.

Well, it doesn't look like I rambled *too* much...
As an ending note, I find it interesting there are no comments on the article yet. Perhaps it not a well-known news site, or it is too new...

[bill]

Still, it is the Daily Mail...

[Supercheese]

Still, it is the Daily Mail...

Strike that "not well-known" part, then.

[bill]

Oh, it's "known". Not for terribly good reasons, but it's "known".

[Aridas]

If we ever figure out how to get video footage of the surface of such a planet, I want to see it.

[Alondro]

I've confirmed the planet's existance.  See here for a more credible report:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070424_hab_exoplanet.html

Still, it orbits a red dwarf with a larger planet orbiting very close.  The planet will likely be gravitationally locked, since the habitable zones of red dwarf stars are rather close to the star, with one face always pointing toward the star.  The planet is also much more massive than Earth.  Its atmosphere could be very very dense given the more powerful gravitational field, and thus the planet could end up being a bigger twin of Venus than of Earth.

It is a possibility for life, but a weak one.  Other stars have planets that are much more interesting.  Giant planets larger than 3 Jupiter masses orbiting in the habitable zones around sun-like stars could have moons larger than Mars orbiting them, potentially even Earth-size!  Since we already know that Jupiter's moons have large quantities of water, and that tidal heating can liquify this water even far from the Sun, the presence of these planets actually helps to expand the habitable zones of those stars, since the internal heating of the habitable moons comes into play and keeps the moon warmer in more distant orbits.  I would expect much fumarole and deep sea thermal vent life on such moons, as we see on the sea floor here.

Erf... I could go on for hours and hours... uhm... go here for tons of info:

http://www.extrasolar.net/

Red dwarfs do have a major advantage for life... they fuse hydrogen so slowly that they won't run out of fuel for over a trillion years!  They'll be the last lifeboats in the universe when all other stars have long gone dark.

[Supercheese]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,268166,00.html

Apparently this is making the rounds in the media....

[TheGreyRonin]

 Just bear in mind, the universe is an extremely harsh and nasty place. If we ever do make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, it's doubtful they'll be Ewoks or E.T.

I'm personally betting on something like the Xenomorphs from Alien, only smarter...

[RJ]

Just bear in mind, the universe is an extremely harsh and nasty place. If we ever do make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, it's doubtful they'll be Ewoks or E.T.

I'm personally betting on something like the Xenomorphs from Alien, only smarter...

Facehuggers? No thanks....

[superluser]

You know, science fiction always focuses on us meeting alien life that's either going to kill us off for food or take our nuclear weapons away until we learn to be nice to each other.

Occasionally, we see the aliens that want us to evolve into something better (this is typical Arthur C. Clarke).

What happens if we start looking at this ``new earth,'' and we detect a rhythmic message coming from them.  We put our top linguists on it, and it turns out to be...

`S'

...i.e. the new-earth equivalent of Guglielmo Marconi's first transatlantic message?  What happens if these aliens are sentient, but not even at our level of development?

The really fun thing would be if we were about 20 years more advanced than them.  Given that they're 20 light years away, the recipient would always be 20 years more advanced than the people that she was talking to.

``Hey--you Earthlings heard about cell phones?''
``Yeah, 20 years ago!  You heard about Bluetooth?''
``Man, you gotta get with the times!''

[Alondro]

Just bear in mind, the universe is an extremely harsh and nasty place. If we ever do make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, it's doubtful they'll be Ewoks or E.T.

I'm personally betting on something like the Xenomorphs from Alien, only smarter...

Why would you say that?  The universe spawned humans, after all.  Oh right...   

We'll find the planet of the Smurfs... 

[KarlOmega1]

Personally...I think we'd either find life on similar planets similar to the lifeforms on Earth here or slighty advanced/arcane.

[Alondro]

I suspect life would be similar.  Carbon chemistry is the same across the universe, as evidenced by astrophysicists finding familiar carbon compounds in nebula.  Plus, forms of life are shaped by evolutionary efficiency.  If the forms on our planet are what have arisen after so long, then we must assume they are very efficient for their environments.  Thus, in environments on other worlds which are similar to terrestrial ones, we can expect the life forms that dwell there may bear quite a degree of structural homology.

Now, hopefully, an interferometer to be launched in 2012 will be able to image Gliese 581 c (and d, if it does exist) and measure the spectrum of the light reflected from its atmosphere (as it almost certainly has one, and a dense one at that, given its massive size) to determine if the composition is one condusive to our type of life forms, or to at least microbial life. 

We must take into account certain factors, such as gravitational lock.  One way may exist for the planet to escape it:  orbital resonance with the other planets.  The tidal tug-of-war could keep the planet rotating just a bit faster than it would if it were the sole body close to the star.  The planets are actually extremely close together compared to our solar system, thus their tidal pull on each other is massive, as is the pull from the star itself.  Not to mention, this would result in tremendous internal heating for all the planets and tremendous tides for any liquid oceans.

But assuming a tidally-locked world, living there would be an utterly bizarre experience for us on Gliese 581 c.  The life on the sunlit side would be held in eternal noon, with the red sun looming largely in the sky, several times wider than our sun appears.  Even with strong atmospheric rotation, the sunlit side would be scorchingly hot, like Death Valley in July at best for the internal regions of any large land masses.  The beings there would never know anything beyond their never-ending day, never would they even suspect that beyond their sun lies a universe virtually without end, for they would never see the little twinkling lights of distant suns; images only night could bring.

And on the frozen dark side, forever gazing into a sky with no light save for the sweeping arc of stars and the cyclical appearance of their sister planet 'd', they would only have rumors of warmth from the denizens of the perpetual twilight regions on the borders of their lands.

Erf... now I have an idea for a novel.  No time to write it, though.   

[Aridas]

What about those living in between?

[superluser]

The beings there would never know anything beyond their never-ending day, never would they even suspect that beyond their sun lies a universe virtually without end, for they would never see the little twinkling lights of distant suns; images only night could bring.

``Imagine the impact of this vision on a species whose entire philosophy demands that they are the only sentient creatures in creation.''

[GabrielsThoughts]

I don't know, I've heard them refer to Venus as Earth's twin, and the wind shear of the atmosphere may rival the storms on Saturn.