New Planet - - - possible life?

Found planet in "habitable zone" where the elements for life as we know it could live, albeit on a diet? Earth-like planet found that may support life

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Astronomers claim to have discovered, for the first time, an Earth-like planet outside our solar system that could support water -- and potentially life.

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Researchers have not directly seen the planet and it will be years before more sensitive instruments will be developed to look for signs of life on the planet that is about 190 trillion kilometres away from Earth.

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But according to measurements, the planet is about 50 per cent larger and five times heavier than Earth. It orbits Gliese 581 -- a diminutive "red dwarf" star located in the constellation Libra.

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Other details of the new planet:

• It orbits its star every 13 days.
• t circles its star 14 times closer than the Earth orbits the sun.
• Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as the Earth's -- so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds on 581 C.
• Astronomers previously found a Neptune-sized planet circling the star Gliese 581, as well as evidence of a third planet about eight times the mass of Earth.

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Search for life is next, researcher says

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Swiss scientist Michel Mayor, who heads the European team that announced the discovery of a new potentially habitable planet, has his sights set on an even bigger target ” detecting signs of extraterrestrial life.

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Mayor predicts that top researchers are less than two decades away from being able to detect real signs of such life ” if it exists.

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"There's only one thing we can do. We can do science, we can do experiments. We have the methodology, the ability to do this simply on science, so let's do it," the University of Geneva scientist said Wednesday.

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Swiss scientist Michel Mayor, who heads the European team that announced the discovery of a new potentially habitable planet, has his sights set on an even bigger target ” detecting signs of extraterrestrial life.

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Mayor predicts that top researchers are less than two decades away from being able to detect real signs of such life ” if it exists.

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"There's only one thing we can do. We can do science, we can do experiments. We have the methodology, the ability to do this simply on science, so let's do it," the University of Geneva scientist said Wednesday.

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That's one short 'year' ... I wonder how that affects things. And the probability that the planet has one face towards it's sun (like our moon).Enjoy
ps origins forum?Edited by RAZD, : pyto

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Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Very exiting news!
Too bad it's 20.5 light years away. That's relatively close, but still far. Maybe we can send some life there.

I'd want to send a very sterile probe first to send back images and other data -- see if life is already there without need of seed from here.If there is then I'd want to know how that planet differed and how it was the same as ours, what the life was like, and if there was any way to see how IT originated.That could take a lifetime ...

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Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Um, 20.5 LY? Why don't we just focus on our solar system first and then worry about other star systems later?I still say we build ships to get to the outer planets right now!

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

20+ light years. Well within our existance bubble. If there is anything intellegent there with a penchant for the EM spectrum then they already know we're here. But then, we would have heard them as well. I guess we will just have to wait and see.Now let's see. At 1/20th the speed of light that's 400+ years to get there, another 20 to get a message back here...I think I'm with Taz on this one. Let's go to Mars, Europa and Titan first.

If life actually inhabits this newly discovered planet, and if it is the same kind of life as we have here on Earth”the only kind of life we know about”then we have two alternatives for explaining our spatially separated co-existence: either abiogenesis occurs multi-regionally or panspermia really works.IMO, this new discovery makes robotic space exploration even more urgent. I would prefer to forget about those romantic notions of torporized humans in pods going to these places to gather information. Waste of NASA's money, anyway. Maybe Simonyi would care to pay for it.”HM

um, hoot, you do realize that panspermia requires abiogenesis, right? It might explain how life got to a planet, but not how life got started. i mean jeez, you have a whole thread (at 305 posts) to figure that out. you still haven't apparently.and if you want to continue that whole bit about DNA and digital codes, there's a new thread for that.

kuresu wrote: Now, really! Take a closer look at my two alternatives: Either abiogernesis is multi-regional or it isn't. If it is then it could have happened on both planets. If it isn't, then the Johnny Appleseed of panspermia had to carry those precious spores from the planet that hosted abiogenesis to the one that didn't. No?”HM

this is all off-topic, but . . . why a planet? we have evidence of amino acids in space itself.and the way you wrote: implies two different foundational processes. It implies either abiogenesis or panspermia. It does not imply that panspermia requires abiogenesis.again, this is all probably off-topic.

NO! It implies EITHER multi-regional abiogenesis OR single-origin abiogenesis, which would require panspermia to account for life on both planets. What's so difficult about that?”HM

And if such life is found on this planet and it turns out to be of a unique chemistry with a unique code in a unique format then what would this say?

Either way, Abiogenesis happened.It happened once, or more than once, by one method or multiple methods, but Abiogenesis happened.The job now is to continue searching for possible Theories of Abiogenesis.Edited by jar, : spallin

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

AZPaul3 asks: In my opinion, it would say to Earthly life that we could have been the winners of the Life-on-Earth contest, while our vanquished competitor could have turned the tides on this Earth-like planet X and vanquished our kind. (Does this new planet have a name yet?). I have two guesses on this ubiquitous-life theory: 1) Life on Planet X will be the same as life on Earth, nothing strage about it; or 2) Life on Planet X will be different from life on Earth, but neither planet supports both kinds of life simultaneously. The third option I would reject: 3) Both kinds of life occupy Planet X.”HM

jar's admonition: Well, of course. Who would disagree with that? The same could be said about the big bang and consciousness. Keep searching.”HM