Possible Earth like planet discovered?

[Dark_Rob]

A new planet has been discovered in the Gliese 581 star system in the constellation Libra that possibly could fit the conditions scientists say would make the planet capable of supporting life. The planet is being called(somewhat boringly) Gliese 581g. It is 20 lightyears from Earth(or about 120 trillion miles)
The whole article can be read here- http://news.discovery.com/space/earth-like-planet-life.html

Robs notes- This is the kind of scientific discovery that fascinates me. However I do take issue with some of the things being said in the article.

First, Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz had this to say

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it,"

He has no basis, foundation or evidence to make such a claim. The current technology we use to identify these planets is speculative at best. It is nowhere near precise enough to determine for sure whether life can exist on the planet or not, let alone say for %100 that it is already there. Mr. Vogt is getting a little ahead of himself. But Il chalk that up to overwhelming excitement at a discovery like this.

Second, astronomer Paul Butler, with the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. rather arrogantly states that

The question wouldn't be to defend that there is life at Gliese 581g,the question would be to demonstrate that there isn't

No sir, that is not how science works. Science never presupposes anything. You cannot discover a planet that MIGHT possibly be capable of supporting life and then out of nowhere make a leap of faith that life must exist there. Again Im willing to chalk this up to overexcitement, but much further study needs to be done by the scientific community to assertain whether the planet is indeed capable of supporting life before we can begin to make conclusions about whether it is already there or not.

Aside from that, the fact that the planet is phase locked with its star(just as our moon is phase locked with Earth) gives me pause. The side facing the sun would most likely always be to hot, while the side facing away from the sun would always be to cold. Not exactly ideal conditions and certainly very different from Earth. But that doesnt mean it isnt possible.
The biggest thing this planet has going for it is that it lies within the suns habitable zone,(The "goldilocks" zone as its being called) and that it appears to have enough mass to hold on to an atmosphere.

What does this mean to us, the human race? Well aside from the excitement of the discovery, and the possibility that life could exist elsewhere in the galaxy,not much else. All we can ever do is study this planet from afar. We can learn alot that way, but its nothing compared to what we could learn if we went there.
Unfortunately at 20 lightyears away, going there is just not an option, nor is it likely to ever be. The current fastest moving manmade object in space is the New Horizons probe, which is on its way to Pluto and due to arrive there on July 14, 2015. It is currently moving at the very fast speed of 14 miles per second(about 50,000 MPH). At that speed it would take about 375,000 years to make the 120,000,000,000,000 mile journey to Gliese 581.

However as human beings we have a need to explore and discover new things, so.........the search goes on.

 

[Krayzie]

They should rename it "God" and ship all the crazy religious people there. They could easily make it there on faith alone.................... and cannibalism

In all seriousness inhabiting another planet is probably the only thing that we should really focus on as a "main goal" for the human race. I've always thought that it was really crazy that we really don't even know too much about how we came to be, because every scrap of evidence gets eaten up by the ever-changing world that we live on.

There could have already been an infinite number of iterations of the human race or something resembling it and they all come to die (possibly even the same way) by the Earth becoming uninhabitable every so many years and we would have no way of knowing it.

By inhabiting as many other planets as possible we greatly increase our chances of surviving whatever process the Earth might make and take the next step in the evolutionary process.

Maybe an infinite number of iterations ago you have already wrote this...

 

[Dark_Rob]

There could have already been an infinite number of iterations of the human race or something resembling it and they all come to die (possibly even the same way) by the Earth becoming uninhabitable every so many years and we would have no way of knowing it.

By inhabiting as many other planets as possible we greatly increase our chances of surviving whatever process the Earth might make and take the next step in the evolutionary process.

Interesting that you say that Scheiss. The fossil record indicates that modern homo sapiens(modern humans like you and me)first appeared around 100,000 years ago. Now our recorded history begins about 6000 years ago in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia(modern day Iraq and Iran). Now in those 6000 years our species has gone from hunter/gatherers in the fertile crescent to the internet and space travel. Weve accomplished all this in just 6000 years.
So what did we do for the other 94,000 years before that? Hang around drawing pictures of buffalo on cave walls? For 94,000 years? really? And then what 6000 years ago we finally decided we were going to do something with our lives? That doesnt seem very likely. In the 90,000 some odd years before recorded history began any number of human civilizations could have risen and fallen and the sands of time would obscure and bury its remains from us. But almost every major culture from around the world shares a common myth or legend of a previous civilization(We call it Atlantis) who had great technology and was swallowed by the earth. There is mislabelled evidence all around us. The pyramids of egypt, stone henge, the various great flood legends that every culture around the world has where civilization is destroyed and a handfull of people survive to rebuild the human race.
Im not thinking of all this on my own either. If your into what could have been mankinds history before our modern history begins I suggest reading "Fingerprints of the gods" by Graham Hancock, A brilliant but unorthodox author and archaeologist. It will change your view of.....everything.

As far as the human race colonizing other worlds, Mars is pretty much our best shot. None of the other planets in our star system come anywhere near it as far as possibility and location are concerned, and leaving our star system is not possible, so Mars is the best bet. Surprisingly most of the technology we would need to begin terra-forming Mars already exists. But currently the costs would be to great to do anything on that scale.

 

[Check]

They should rename it "God" and ship all the crazy religious people there. They could easily make it there on faith alone.................... and cannibalism

Scheiss is such a beast. Nice post.

 

[sadistic_beauty]

Very interesting! I wonder what it's like out there. One thing that I noticed will be hard for human beings is to stick with the fact that Gliese 581 does not rotate. There for it is always going to be bright on one side and the other will always be dark. I would pretty much freak out if my world is doesn't have daylight AND night.

 

[STORMS]

Very interesting and kinda freaky at the same time... well, Space in general freaks me out, but only because of how fasinating it truly is.

 

[Krayzie]

Interesting that you say that Scheiss. The fossil record indicates that modern homo sapiens(modern humans like you and me)first appeared around 100,000 years ago. Now our recorded history begins about 6000 years ago in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia(modern day Iraq and Iran). Now in those 6000 years our species has gone from hunter/gatherers in the fertile crescent to the internet and space travel. Weve accomplished all this in just 6000 years.
So what did we do for the other 94,000 years before that? Hang around drawing pictures of buffalo on cave walls? For 94,000 years? really? And then what 6000 years ago we finally decided we were going to do something with our lives? That doesnt seem very likely. In the 90,000 some odd years before recorded history began any number of human civilizations could have risen and fallen and the sands of time would obscure and bury its remains from us. But almost every major culture from around the world shares a common myth or legend of a previous civilization(We call it Atlantis) who had great technology and was swallowed by the earth. There is mislabelled evidence all around us. The pyramids of egypt, stone henge, the various great flood legends that every culture around the world has where civilization is destroyed and a handfull of people survive to rebuild the human race.
Im not thinking of all this on my own either. If your into what could have been mankinds history before our modern history begins I suggest reading "Fingerprints of the gods" by Graham Hancock, A brilliant but unorthodox author and archaeologist. It will change your view of.....everything.

As far as the human race colonizing other worlds, Mars is pretty much our best shot. None of the other planets in our star system come anywhere near it as far as possibility and location are concerned, and leaving our star system is not possible, so Mars is the best bet. Surprisingly most of the technology we would need to begin terra-forming Mars already exists. But currently the costs would be to great to do anything on that scale.

You should definitely watch, "Top Secret: The Day After Roswell." It mentions pictures of light bulbs being drawn on walls inside places where there is not enough oxygen to keep torches lit, yet there is structure and art built inside the pitch black halls.

It's possible, hopefully it was the reptilian version of me.



Yeah I thought that it would be pretty hard die in the ocean even if the planet was being destroyed atm if we created a really good ship that could create its own energy somehow.

What's funny to me is that to reach the planet that you posted about we would have to go through a lot of generations of people on a ship just to reach it and by the time we got there people would have long forgotten about the Earth outside of pics/vids. We would lose bone mass and end up looking like the aliens we have always written "fables" about.

Which always makes you wonder if people living here have done it before and that is what aliens actually are when we first meet. It would be pretty fucked up if we were actually more so "the center of the universe" than what we have disproved.

I honestly think we are close to being able to do it at this point, I just don't think investors are willing to put their money on something that they will never see returns on because it will take place over several generations. Terra-forming can take 100 years at the earliest and I think there will be tons of options for terra-forming future planets after we get the experience of doing it to one of them. It could be as easy as throwing a bunch of cow shit and water all over some of them and waiting for all we know. Anything to disrupt the natural flow (or lack of flow) of a planets evolution.

It seems more impossible to me that humans will have to come to terms with the fact that (globally) they don't own anything and need to work together to get something important of this scale done.

We would have to find a way to use a lot of our resources for that, and that would require people giving up a lot of their personal stash that their families have owned since they could remember. We would also have to reconsider everything that we do now once we got there knowing that, and work more as a unit than individual teams.

And at this point I realize that I could ramble about this for about a week. I swear I haven't smoked pot in years, I just think it is really important and interesting. It's the "purpose to life" that everyone kills each other over and they would rather think a story is more important than to consider how much work it is, so they call it ridiculous.



haha

Amazing theory.

I'm actually writing up a story that has to do with something like this, and I like to use logic into every supernatural thing I incorporate in it. Aliens being humans is something I always thought of, but over the years shaping themselves into looking like that makes sense.

 

[Demonium]

so one half of this planet is pure ice?