NASA finds possible habitable planet.

[Corrderio]

NASA and NSF-Funded Research Finds First Potentially Habitable Exoplanet

A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of a planet with three times the mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone."

This discovery was the result of more than a decade of observations using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, one of the world's largest optical telescopes. The research, sponsored by NASA and the National Science Foundation, placed the planet in an area where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.

To astronomers, a "potentially habitable" planet is one that could sustain life, not necessarily one where humans would thrive. Habitability depends on many factors, but having liquid water and an atmosphere are among the most important.

The new findings are based on 11 years of observations of the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581using the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I Telescope. The spectrometer allows precise measurements of a star's radial velocity (its motion along the line of sight from Earth), which can reveal the presence of planets. The gravitational tug of an orbiting planet causes periodic changes in the radial velocity of the host star. Multiple planets induce complex wobbles in the star's motion, and astronomers use sophisticated analyses to detect planets and determine their orbits and masses.

"Keck's long-term observations of the wobble of nearby stars enabled the detection of this multi-planetary system," said Mario R. Perez, Keck program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Keck is once again proving itself an amazing tool for scientific research."

Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution lead the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey. The team's new findings are reported in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal and posted online at:

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Vogt. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system outside of our own. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly-circular orbits.

The new planet designated Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times that of Earth and orbits its star in just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere.

Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has two previously detected planets that lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly-discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.

The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet's surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet's surface would be the line between shadow and light (known as the "terminator").

EDIT: Pics from NASA (Images are a lot larger than what they show on the site, so decided against uploading them here)

Comparison of our solar system and Gliese 581 (Planet G is the planet they're talking about): http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/...81_System.html
Artist's conception of this planet: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/...liese_581.html

SOURCE: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/...1_feature.html

Pretty interesting read. However we're still ages away from that kind of travel.

[Atreides]

good thing we found a new planet now that we're almost done using this one up

[Corrderio]

I want to know if we can call it Planet Bob (Please say you get the joke)

[Athas]

That is a really old movie.

And I don't even remember it being that good.

[Indalecia]

The concept of it was silly, but it had a few good parts in it.

[Egon]

I thought it was a cool movie.

[Atreides]

if only matt damon could be that hot in real life

[Kuya]

Isn't this old news? I could have sworn this news about this same planet was posted here.

[Corrderio]

Isn't this old news? I could have sworn this news about this same planet was posted here.

Might be possible, but hasn't NASA been saying the same thing for quite awhile?

That is a really old movie.

And I don't even remember it being that good.

Can't comment since I haven't seen it in years, but that's the part that I always remember.

[Atreides]

no, the planet that made news a while back was 581d or something, this new planet is 581g

[Callisto]

I thought NASA was like...locked down from actually doing anything due to funding cuts?

[Ahkow]

I thought maury strikes back ..

[notorious bum]

It would be cool if we were to go there one day, land there, find out there was intelligent life. But, then our ship breaks down because we let NASA and American automakers merge to cut costs on the spaceship and then we're fucked because the people there are actually not that friendly(like we are), so they section our asses off and force us to work in sweatshops; making Nikes and Ed Hardy T-shirts(since they're the easiest to produce). Except, in this movie we can't make an escape pod because we only sent people we can afford to lose(insert politician, reality stars, popstars, amish, etc.) as a test-run, while we are making replicas of Independence Day ships so we can show them how exploration is done on Big Blue.

[Silenka]

That movie fucking rocked, haters.

Also pretty sure the main part of NASA's program that was nixed was putting humans back up in space which is why we're stuck sending workers to the space station in outdated Russian capsules. The observation stuff (giant advanced ground/space telescopes, probes, etc) are mostly still being developed.

[Gadritan]

No Pandorum references yet?

[Restrat]

I thought NASA was like...locked down from actually doing anything due to funding cuts?

Because republicans aren't allowing for any legislation to pass, their new budget hasn't gone into effect. they get to continue at the old one until it passes

[Insanecyclone]

Titan AE was awesome back then

http://i51.tinypic.com/296203s.jpg

[Shenrien]

^ lol

anyhow, this is good news all tho we are far from the technology capable of traveling such distances, but at least when the day comes when we achieve such capabilities that we'll at least have one place to go to before shit separates to far away from us to be a possible voyage.

[Feedmenow]

Three times the mass, three times the gravity, right?

[altwight]

over 9,000