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Yup... our very first (well, second if you count Earth) Class M planet... Gliese 581g.
About 20 light year away (only a couple thousand years at present technology level to get there...).
Being tidally locked (or nearly so) it doesn't sound like an ideal spot for colonization... but hey, if there IS liquid water, that'll be the first time it's ever been found outside our solar system.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/ea...00929.html
http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=ApFpuZxVYc3...new_earths
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Billyuns and Billyuns of 'em out there !
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Well now they have a place to focus the SETI project on.
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Apparently the main worry now is that any any moment scientists expect that one or all of the three bears will return.
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....so CLASS in in session now.....??
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I reject your reality and substitute my own!
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That tidally locked thing is a bit of a problem. The only viable life zone would be the thin boundary between the dark and light sides. If it still rotates at all on anything more than a geologic time scale, that would be worse, as it'll fry/freeze stuff before it can establish.
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Acer;
Apparently, either from one of the links or from another story, it does rotate slowly... and the extremes are "tolerable"... from -30 to +160 F. Does not exclude life...
What they don't have is proof of liquid water...
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Another problem with actually living in a planet in the habitable zone so near a red dwarf star is that they have solar flares just like our sun. That is, the flares are as powerful as our sun's. But when your star is much dimmer and closer to maintain that habitable zone, the relative size of the flares are much larger and more life-threatening.
A small detail.
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Paul F. wrote:
Acer;
Apparently, either from one of the links or from another story, it does rotate slowly... and the extremes are "tolerable"... from -30 to +160 F. Does not exclude life...
If it does rotate, however slowly, that would prevent all the water from being locked up in the form of ice on the "cold" side. I would be interested to know if the planet's rotational axis is parallel or very nearly so to it's orbital axis, or if the rotational axis is somewhat skewed resulting in "seasons" (albeit very long ones)?
Paul F. wrote:
What they don't have is proof of liquid water...
Not yet. (fingers crossed)
