New Earth Discovered?

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European astronomers have spotted what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet outside our solar system, with balmy temperatures that could support water and, potentially, life.

They have not directly seen the planet, orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 581. But measurements of the star suggest that a planet not much larger than the Earth is pulling on it, the researchers say in a letter to the editor of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"This one is the first one that is at the same time probably rocky, with water, and in a zone close to the star where the water could exist in liquid form," said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, who led the study.

"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius (32 to 104 degrees F), and water would thus be liquid."

Most of the 200 or so planets that have been spotted outside this solar system have been gas giants like Jupiter. But this one is small.

"Its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky, like our Earth, or covered with oceans," Udry said in a telephone interview.

It appears to have a mass five times that of Earth's.

The research team includes scientists credited with the first widely accepted discovery of a planet outside our solar system, in 1995.

Many teams are looking for planets circling other stars. They are especially looking for those similar to our own, planets that could support life.

That means finding water.

X MARKS THE SPOT

"Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life," Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University in France, said in a statement.

"On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Gliese 581 is among the 100 closest stars to Earth, just 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.

A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

It is smaller and dimmer than the sun, so the planet can be close to it and yet not be overheated.

"These low-mass stars are the ones where we are going to be able to discover planets in the habitable zone first," said planet-hunter David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who was not involved in the research.

Bennett cautioned that current temperature alone does not mean water still exists on the planet. It could have burned off ages ago, when the star was hotter than it is now.

Udry's team uses a method known as radial velocity, using the European Southern Observatory telescope at La Silla, Chile.

The same team has identified one larger planet orbiting Gliese 581 already and say they have strong evidence of a third planet with a mass about eight times that of the Earth.

Future missions, perhaps in 20 to 30 years, may be able to block the light from the star and take a spectrographic image of the planets. The colour of the light coming from the planet can give hints of whether water, or perhaps large amounts of plant life, exist there.

Interesting...might there be another planet with life out there?

Wowweeee! Cool! :D

hehe I'd love to travel to a different planet ... in my next life or so...

anyhow, with these news now, "aliens" don't seem so incredible anymore, right? :D

SilverLady wrote:

hehe I'd love to travel to a different planet ... in my next life or so...

lol well to travel to that one you'd surely have to wait for your next life XD cause it would take about 600 000 years for us to get there with the fastest thing we can use lol

Unless they go all sci-fi and invent suspended animation.

Hey...it could happen!

Ha yeah right. Anyway I don't think they'll ever find an intelligent humanoid species. If they ever do find anything alive, it'll probably be a microorganism of some sort.

Think of it this way--if there is anyone alive out there and they haven't yet contacted us in a friendly manner, then either they don't know how or they don't want to. I don't know why everyone is so obsessed with finding an alien species. What, we don't have enough to deal with on our own planet? I could already imagine us fighting for control over the universe...or trying to 'educate' or 'help' them...or vice versa...so many people dying...please. If there are any aliens hiding out there, let them stay hidden, for everyone's sakes. Which is what they seem to be doing (if they even exist). XD

well... they doooo exist, in my opinion :D

... as you can see, when one watches a TV programme about aliens when they're 8 and at midnight, it does seem very realistic and it marks their whole future alien-belief

but really, the universe is enormous - and who are we to think so highly of ourselves to say we're the only ones living in it?