Potentially habitable planet found

[Shadowrun]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070425/...bitable_planet

Highlights:

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

Before you get your hopes up:

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

Hawking:

"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."

[thylacine]

FWIW another link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6589157.stm

[SNOWBALL]

Why are they calling this planet "relatively close"? if it's 20.5 light years away? It wouldn't be possible for any human to travel there.

[A_C_Slater]

[ QUOTE ]
Why are they calling this planet "relatively close"? if it's 20.5 light years away? It wouldn't be possible for any human to travel there.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is still in relative (cosmic) terms very very close to Earth. And it could be possible some day. And if so this may be our first destination or possibly Alpha Centauri (closest star) since it's only 4 light years away. The following link is about warp drive speculation.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/re...warp/warp.html

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
Why are they calling this planet "relatively close"? if it's 20.5 light years away? It wouldn't be possible for any human to travel there.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you shrunk the observable universe down to the size of the Earth, then this 20.5 light years would correspond to about 5 millimeters. So "relatively close" is a pretty reasonable expression.

[Metric]

[ QUOTE ]
Why are they calling this planet "relatively close"? if it's 20.5 light years away? It wouldn't be possible for any human to travel there.

[/ QUOTE ]
Within 100 to 200 years (and possibly less) we may be re-defining what constitutes "human" anyway. I agree it would be prohibitively expensive (at least) to send any humans there as of right now.

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
Why are they calling this planet "relatively close"? if it's 20.5 light years away?

[/ QUOTE ]

The Milky Way is approximately 100,000 light years from edge to edge. Compared to that, 20.5 is most definitely "relatively close," and that's just our galaxy.

[ill rich]

if the universe is infinate in sice 10^6000 light years away is relatively close.

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
if the universe is infinate in sice 10^6000 light years away is relatively close.

[/ QUOTE ]

Luckily, astronomers don't believe the universe to be infinite.

[Sephus]

[ QUOTE ]
if the universe is infinate in sice 10^6000 light years away is relatively close.

[/ QUOTE ]

in the same sense that any distance is relatively close.