Astronomers Find First Earth-like Planet

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Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and capable of having liquid water. Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.

What do you make of this news? Do you think that as our technology progresses we will find more and more hospitable worlds, and possibly find life? How long do you think this will take? We didn't even know that other stars had planets until 1995 and now a decade later we have found one that is similar to our own.

My personal view is that we are on the brink of discovering a planet with liquid water and hospitable conditions for life. However, I don't think we will find life on such a planet - not in my lifetime, anyway. And we certainly won't be able to go there for a few centuries at least, possibly millenia if we last that long.

But, I think we will get there. Eventually. We've come a long way in 2000 years, just think how far we can get in another 2000.
 
I think it is probably arrogant to think that life doesn't exist somewhere out there, and as long as our technology continues to advance, we will most likely find it eventually.

I would probably agree with the point about it probably not being in any of our lifetimes, though, but at the rate things seem to be moving, who knows. We've certainly made a ridiculous amount of progress in the last hundred or so years compared to the majority of the years before it combined, so at the rate we're going it's entirely possible we'll find something in the next few decades.

That'll create some mighty interesting debates I imagine, haha.
 
i need to know:

-level of certain gases
-what gases are poisonous
-landscape (miles of dust is lol'able
-containment of gases present in the atosphere.
 
Leonard said:
-level of certain gases
-what gases are poisonous
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Just because gases are poisonous for us (humans) does not mean that they are poisonous for other forms of life. There are plenty of examples of this on earth alone. The same goes for "required" gases.

As far as things being reachable in our lifetime goes...we should never be so sure. The progress of technology in the last 100 or so years (since oil/electric lighting) has, I'd argue, been equivalent or has come close to the progress of technology of all human years before it. Things develop at a ridiculous pace now
 
t
Surgo said:
Just because gases are poisonous for us (humans) does not mean that they are poisonous for other forms of life. There are plenty of examples of this on earth alone. The same goes for "required" gases.

As far as things being reachable in our lifetime goes...we should never be so sure. The progress of technology in the last 100 or so years (since oil/electric lighting) has, I'd argue, been equivalent or has come close to the progress of technology of all human years before it. Things develop at a ridiculous pace now
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well of course stuff does support other forms of life we can't stand, i was thinking it would be cool if there was somewhat of an elemental extractor of sorts that could also introduce levels that are hospitable for humans as well....

people can isolate uranium atoms, why not take it to a larger scale? knowing what the levels of gases would be pretty cool because who knows, it just might be possible if it isn't too large to extract

as you said, technology is going too fast to render anything impossible.
 
The most exciting thing about this for me is that the planet is only 20 light years away, which can be reached in a not-so-ridiculous amount of time using new propulsion systems (we're talking just decades to a few centuries rather than millenia).

I hope they are considering planets where other solvents exist in liquid form, because thinking life only occurs where there's water is quite arrogant, even if our science has dismissed such possibilities.
 
I wouldn't say it's "arrogant" to think that about planets with water and the relation to life. H2O is the most ideal solvent we know of for the job which makes it the most likely link for life on other planets. And just looking for planets with water and liveable conditions for our standards is more beneficial to us anyway.
 
Nobody will ever really come to know how the universe was created, or how life started. Its all a mystery. The religiously inclined will feel its the work of god, the scientifically inclined will believe in theories like the Big Bang.

I will go with Einstein on this one. "There are no accidents". Life being created wasn't an accident and if its happened here, it could happen again or may already have happened. We aren't the only creatures to roam Earth alone and with the universe being such a vast space, its very likely that theyre are many other planets capable of supporting life and many which would actually have living creatures on them.

You say that H2O is the most ideal solvent, thats true but we do have a very limited knowledge. We can only search till so far yet, the universe is amazingly huge, who knows what all elements there may be? Man himself has created a few elements, couldn't there be something even better than H2O? Couldn't there be aliens far more evolved and advanced than us?

You say that we've advanced a lot in 2000 years, well we've been around a lot longer than that. We supposedly evolved from apes and have been here for a long long time. I wouldn't be surprised if some lifeform finds us rather than us finding them.

Our search and our scope is very limited, we limit ourselves to finding water rather than other solvents that might be even better suited for the job. Its just how I feel, but really, species evolve, everything evolves.

I remember reading somewhere that when a new mosquito-killer is made (some spray or something), out of a hundred, a couple are somehow immune to it. Those two furthur breed and produce and entire race which is immune. This is how organisms get past obstacles. Gas levers wouldn't matter for other species. Sure, for humans it would, but if others can adapt and evolve so can we.

This planet seems a real find but its still a long long time from being able to reach it.
 
Millers experiment is very interesting here, the fact that you can make amino acids (which makes protiens, so life basically ) with only 4 simple (stable) gases (methane CO2 water and ammonia).

Finding life on another planet though just seems unlikely since it's had plenty of time to devellop, but I guess it's harder to detect molecules than planets..
When you think about "Spore" like implications though... It's mind-boggling O~O

CC said:
using new propulsion systems
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http://www.digg.com/space/A_Hyperdrive_Engine_that_travels_through_other_dimensions
 
I believe that the miller experiment was misproved due to the fact that there was no ozone so the reactions couldn't take place because of the UV rays or something like that
 
well I think it is pretty inevitable that life exists elsewhere in the universe, because as I think Steven Hawking said, if life spontaneously generated here, it must be possible for it to spontaneously generate else where

However, I think the probability of us ever finding said life is close to zero. The galaxy itself is so immense, and then take into account that there are like a billion galaxies. Life undoubtedly exists in one of them, but the probability of us ever finding it is small

I suppose life could find us though, because the universe is very old, and we got started off pretty late. Think about what human technology could be in a 50,000 years or so, (assuming that we are still around). We would easily be able to cross galaxies and such. If life somewhere got started much earlier than here, other life could be advanced enough to reach us
 
I believe that there is a good chance that mankind will populate another planet (not counting mars) within the next 200-300 years. If George W's plan to create a moon base goes ahead, this will make space exploration a lot easier as ships could be built on the moon where it would take a lot less energy for them to take off, meaning that they could be a lot larger than current manned ships are. A colony on the moon would also accelerate our knowledge of living off of earth, meaning we would be better prepared for when we got to another planet.

As for the search for water, it is a unique solvent in that its boiling point is far higher than it should be, meaning that it is a liquid at the optimal temperature for a lot of chemical reactions, and it also the most abundant compound in the universe (as far as we know), meaning it is more likely to be found.
 
I hope the moon base does go ahead, I think at this point the world needs something to bring it together as 'humanity' rather than 'america vs world' and advancing technologically in such a dramatic way would really do that, much like the moon landings did. And, as you say, ships wouln't require so much energy to take off (although the parts would have to get to the moon somehow unless there were factories... not really preferable since we wouldnt even have colonised it before starting to pollute it)
 
Gormenghast said:
Millers experiment is very interesting here, the fact that you can make amino acids (which makes protiens, so life basically ) with only 4 simple (stable) gases (methane CO2 water and ammonia).
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While a cool reaction, I think this is mostly irrelevent in the 'is there life outside of earth?' debate. The chances of some 'other' life forms using amino acids as building blocks for, well, everything, should be pretty low. I'd say we're a lot more likely to find something using some other mechanism and should be looking past what is used to power ourselves.
 
Five times the mass of earth? How much greater would gravity be there?

This is pretty awesome. The "goldilocks zone" of conditions necessary to support life that the earth exists in is pretty narrow.

Too bad there probably won't be any intelligent life there, since if there was, chances would be that they would have found US. Hopefully there are at least some forms of life there. That way we might be able to learn more about the origins of life. Or maybe it wil just create more questions. Either way, the field of exobiology will actually be useful then.
 
Not necessarily. There could be intelligent life that simply isn't technologically advanced enough to find us yet. Besides, if you think about it, they might even be capable of doing so, and it's just that our planet has been overlooked because they deem it unable to support life for whatever reasons they think.
 
m0nkfish said:
(although the parts would have to get to the moon somehow unless there were factories... not really preferable since we wouldnt even have colonised it before starting to pollute it)
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Can you really pollute a place if there is no atmosphere/ ecosystem to pollute?
 
Cookie Crumbz said:
Not necessarily. There could be intelligent life that simply isn't technologically advanced enough to find us yet. Besides, if you think about it, they might even be capable of doing so, and it's just that our planet has been overlooked because they deem it unable to support life for whatever reasons they think.
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That's why i said probably, since it's dumb to rule out a possibility, but because the universe is so old, the chance that intelligent life has technology below ours is lower than the chance of them having technology above. I mean, compared to how long life has existed on this planet, humans have been around a tiny amount of time. And compared to how long humans have existed, the amount of time from now to when we can colonize other planets can't be very long.
 
PikaPete said:
Can you really pollute a place if there is no atmosphere/ ecosystem to pollute?
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good point - i suppose i am thinking of the eventual full colonisation of the moon, growing hardy crops and whatnot that can 'produce' some sort of atmosphere, although i have no idea how possible that is
 
m0nkfish said:
good point - i suppose i am thinking of the eventual full colonisation of the moon, growing hardy crops and whatnot that can 'produce' some sort of atmosphere, although i have no idea how possible that is
Click to expand...


If you tried to create an atmosphere on the moon, it wouldn't work since the moon doesn't have enough gravity to keep the gases from floating into space. I guess you can contain this "atmosphere" in a dome or something, though.
 
Shiv said it right, the Universe is sure big and I think we aren't the only living creatures. I can't say that any creature that lives somewhere in the universe has a very advanced technology, because if they did, they would've probably come to our planet, or at least do something to make us see or hear them, well, maybe something like ours :)

Im kinda happy that I finally see some other planet like Earth, and I hope we go there xD or at least, get more news about it...
 
yeah read the articles and saw the news channel reportrefer to shiv's post every thing has some reason behind it which may not be specific we always have something to discover
 
How is it arrogant to think there is not life elsewhere? The circumstances to host life on Earth were pretty crazy. Anyway, unless we ever figure a way to travel light years away, it does not really matter for us, since it would take hundreds of years just to get there!
 
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