Thread: Astronomers Discover Potentially Habitable Planet

....so cool.

Astronomers have discovered their "holy grail" - a planet capable of supporting life outside our solar system.


...Scientists found the planet, Gliese 667Cc, orbiting around a red dwarf star, 22 light years away from the earth.
Red dwarf stars are the most common stars in the neighbourhood of the sun, usually hosting planets called gas giants, which are not composed of rock matter...


The University Göttingen and University of California scientists have calculated the planet recieves ten per cent less light from its red dwarf star than the Earth gets from the Sun.


As the light is in the infrared area, the planet still receives nearly the same amount of energy as the Earth, meaning water could be liquid and surface temperatures could be similar to ours.


Astronomers are hailing the plant as the 'Holy Grail' of discoveries, as 20 years ago scientists were still arguing about the existence of planets beyond our solar system.


Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet in 1995, astronomers have confirmed the existence of more than 760 planets beyond the solar system, with only four believed to be in a habitable zone. ...

Nice, but wait until a generally respected scientific source calls this a "holy grail".

The "holy grail" will be when we can detect water in all of its 3 states, something which is still very difficult to do, along with other common physical planet attributes, like distance from the star, etc.

There's no doubt planets like that exist. There's nothing unique in Nature... there's always more than one of something.

The "holy grail" will be when we make contact with someone living on one of these planets.

Originally Posted by Your Star

The "holy grail" will be when we make contact with someone living on one of these planets.

....given the odds that any contact in the near future will be initiated by them, I would say that wouldn't be the Holy Grail so much as it would be The Day Humanity Get's To Choose Between Slavery And Annihilation.

Originally Posted by Your Star

The "holy grail" will be when we make contact with someone living on one of these planets.

no, the Holy Grail is when we discover any form of complicated life on another planet.

If we find a worm on this planet, that is a monumental achievement.

Originally Posted by cpwill

....given the odds that any contact in the near future will be initiated by them, I would say that wouldn't be the Holy Grail so much as it would be The Day Humanity Get's To Choose Between Slavery And Annihilation.

That is assuming they would have the same violent tendencies as humans, and I'm not at all sure that would be the case.

Originally Posted by cpwill

....given the odds that any contact in the near future will be initiated by them, I would say that wouldn't be the Holy Grail so much as it would be The Day Humanity Get's To Choose Between Slavery And Annihilation.

Depends on what their society is like and why they are coming here. When talking about aliens you can't really assume they have the same though process as us, or would act like us.

Originally Posted by Your Star

Depends on what their society is like and why they are coming here. When talking about aliens you can't really assume they have the same though process as us, or would act like us.

I tend to agree with Stephen Hawkin's recent comments regarding aliens... that we should not be so eager to establish communication with other intelligent species because the most likely outcome is that the aliens will be significantly more advanced than humans and if they also have the capability of interstellar travel, something humans may be able to achieve no earlier than several millenniums from now, it is very likely that the aliens will completely dominate our species and our planet, the same way we are dominating our own environment even to our own long-range detriment.

Another star wobbles by a pixel, yay.

Originally Posted by Paralogic

I tend to agree with Stephen Hawkin's recent comments regarding aliens... that we should not be so eager to establish communication with other intelligent species because the most likely outcome is that the aliens will be significantly more advanced than humans and if they also have the capability of interstellar travel, something humans may be able to achieve no earlier than several millenniums from now, it is very likely that the aliens will completely dominate our species and our planet, the same way we are dominating our own environment even to our own long-range detriment.

I don't necessarily agree with this 100%, but I do think that it's extremely unlikely we would ever meet an intelligent species at a level of technological development similar to ours. It took close to 4 billion years from the time life first showed up on the planet until intelligent life (modern humans) developed. It took a few hundred thousand years to go from the development of intelligent life to move beyond small tribes of hunter gatherers. And in just a few thousand years, we've gone from hunter gatherers to beginning to explore the universe outside our own planet. Chances are probably pretty good that any alien life we discovered would either be simple unintelligent life or intelligent life millions (or maybe billions) of years more technologically advanced than us.