Possible first earth-like plan­et "super- Earth" found out­side our So­lar Sys­tem

Originally posted by yeti101
nybaseball44

the technology currently exists in the form of coronagraphs & interferometers.

We just need to send them into space

www.sciencedaily.com...



[edit on 2-5-2007 by yeti101]

Ahaha, you gotta be kidding. Thats a tech in early developement that all it will do is show a blip on the radar so to speak.. just look at their simulation demonstration picture.. all it does it show us theres a dot indicating the planet is there. It has nothing to do with detecting water/atmosphere/life... did you even read my post? Thnx, try again.

You do know what a spectrograph is right?

If not, then have a look at this link.

outreach.atnf.csiro.au...

Besides, we have detected signs of water in the atmosphere of three exoplanets already.

www.newscientist.com...

[edit on 3-5-2007 by sardion2000]

nysball44 lol read the above post.

all we need is a dot of light from the planet and we can harvest a nice amount of data.

even the COROT telescope which found its first planet yesterday will be able to give us some information of a planets chemical composition.

www.esa.int...

small planets down to the size of our Earth – three times smaller than initially thought possible - will be in the grasp of COROT. The satellite may also be able, in specific circumstances, to detect subtle variations in the stellar light reflected by the planet itself. This would give an indication of its chemical composition

A few questions I have seen asked but not answered (I admit I was skimming and may have missed the answer in a short post somewhere)

A lot of this could be wrong. I know there are people quite a bit more qualified to take a stab at this stuff than me running around here. This is the best I can do with a few general ed courses and a little reading around online on short notice.

1. Does 5 times mass mean 5 times gravity?
No. The gravitational pull of an object depends both on its mass and the distance of the object being pulled from the center of mass. Therefore, the surface gravity of this planet will depend upon the planet's radius, which in turn depends on the density of the material which makes up the planet.

We have been able to calculate the planet's mass and its position based on its gravitational affect on the rest of the system. We don't know where its surface will be exactly though so we don't know its surface gravity yet. We have established a range of possible radii at which a planet in that position would not be ripped apart or otherwise rendered unstable by the rest of the system.

The potential radius of the planet ranges anywhere between 150% of Earth's and a little under 200% of Earth's. 5 times Earth's mass, at a distance somewhere in that range, would yield a gravity somewhere between 125% of Earth's gravity and 220% of Earth's gravity.

2. I keep seeing people say this place is billions of years older than our system. The star is actually estimated at 0.3 billion years younger than ours. I can't find any estimate of age for the planet itself, which would seem difficult to make.

3. Does it rotate or not?
Mathematically speaking, probably not. The answer could be a catagorical no, but I haven't done the math. It is theoretically possible for the planet to not be locked, or to have not been locked at some point in its history, although its proximity to its star does favor locking.

That's important because it's large enough and dense enough that we might reasonably expect a liquid metal core, which means possibly a magnetic field, and the rate of its rotation should have an impact on the strength and logevity of that field.

That in turn would impact on the presence of an atmosphere, especially water. Look what happened to Mars when their field collapsed.


My predictions, assuming we do enough looking into it to find out much about it, which will take a considerable amount of time, and probably wont be complete in my lifetime:
It'll be tidally locked, remarkably metal rich, won't have liquid water but will have a thick atmosphere, will be home to a few extremophiles, will be seismically and volcanically very active, and will probably be a target for colonization, and rightfully so since having a presence there not only gives us a stepping off point for further exploration eventually, but doubles or chances of recieving contact.

true...if 5 times mass is not 5 times gravity
same reason the moon is 1/4 the size of the earth and has a gravity 1/6 that of earth.

the interplay of the moon and the earth and gravity at the surface vs the center

www.astronomynotes.com...

[edit on 4-5-2007 by junglelord]

Vagabond, i would say your right on the money with those predictions except for it being a target for colonization.

The chances are this planet is more like a mini-uranus- not very nice for humans.

The experts think a terrestrial planet can be no more than 2 and no less than 0.75 earth masses. Too small like mars (0.5 earth masses) and the planet doesnt have enough mass to hold onto its atmosphere. Above 2 earth masses its thought the planet will hold onto too much gas.

This planet is 5 earth masses. too big

In the next few months CoRoT should give us the first earth mass planet in the HZ of a red dwarf www.esa.int...

[edit on 5-5-2007 by yeti101]

True Yeti, it's certainly nowhere a person would want to live, but I have a different concept of what an early space expansion might look like.

I tend to think that we are unlikely to master faster than light travel simply because I would expect a slice of real estate like ours to have been conquered several times over in human history if it was possible. Of course that tells you how I treat the variables in the Drake Equasion and there's a significant possibility that I am just plain wrong.

Assuming that naturally habitable planets for carbon based life as we know it are rare, a space empire is not a traversable, trading network of aligned states but a network of civilizations far enough apart to be immune to eachothers actions and thus free to exchange information without significant consequence to themselves. Basically you step out a little further each few generations and establish a new outpost, and the best you can ever hope to get in return is information, and failing the advent of quantum communication, even that at a significant lag time.

That being the case, any system in close proximity to Earth that has a signifcant and concentrated supply of the heavier element under temperature and gravitational conditions that make them accessible to us is a destination for early colonization.

My admittedly speculative belief is that we could have Gliese 581 c colonized (in the sense of having a few thousand humans there for scientific purposes and using the planet as a base for further outreach) in 800 years. I'm giving us 100 years to get our act together 400 years for the first round trip, and 300 years to prepare, send, and establish the colonial mission... I'm assuming we're not in such a rush that we want to shoot billions of dollars and hundreds of souls into space without a 75%+ chance of success, that we are infact confined to sublight, and that we're not very efficient... and of course that nobody finds us first and speeds the process up.

Of course all that is assuming there isn't something promising a bit closer. If everything closer ends up being devoid of significant planets, it could end up taking the place popularly occupied by alpha centauri, which isn't incredibly useful if it turns out not to have a terrestrial planet with readily accessible oxygem (oxygen alone is worth something, being the rarer third of the water a craft would theoretically have to replace now and again for a multitude of purposes).


Another thing I like about that view, although its not factored into my formation of the opinion, is that it removes the idea from the influence of the Zeitgeist. Although I don't think humans will ever entirely get along without either falling under the control of an authoritarian state or evolving to a point where we have a biological instinct to support the community above ourselves (call me nuts if you like, but if ants had a higher brain and opposable digits, they'd rule this planet, size be damned), I still believe that we can get along in pretty much the same way that the NWO does- by playing cut-throat politics with eachother and trying to avoid outright murder, except of course in the cases of people named Kennedy or Wellstone- which, more simply stated, means that I think that if we were able to go to Gliese 581 c right now, a war would probably break out here on Earth if the mission was successful, but I figure a few hundred years down the road we will be content to lie cheat and steal from eachother to get our slice of the shared pie.


Parting question for the road if there are any hardcore physics buffs around here... to have a density about 1.75 times that of any terrestrial planets in our system (8.? g/whatever versus 5.? g/whatever... I admit I am rusty and dont feel like going to wikipedia right now) I assume Gliese 581 c would need a greater proportion of metals. Question: to have a significantly greater proportion of metals, wouldn't it have to be in a pretty special circumstance- specifically being already there and in close proximity at the time that the star that birthed those elements ejected them?

If so, it seems to me that the area would be a rare and valuable peice of ground, and may also have something to teach us about the what circumstances make for what kind of star system compositions, and therfore where in the galaxy we are most likely to find the conditions most likely to produce intelligent life. Or is synthesis of heavier elements more common than I think?

its early on in the space race to find planets.
in time we will either make it or kill ourselfs first due to the human condition of being evil to his brother and being a killer and a murder.




back in the 70's I said almost every star has planets...that was not the belief back then....small minded people.


[edit on 5-5-2007 by junglelord]

^
^^
^^^Dr. Frank Drake back in 1961 used the assumption that half of all stars had planets for his now famous "Drake Equation" (en.wikipedia.org...). He said at the time that he was using conservative estimates for all of his variables.

So there were mainstream scientists who felt that planetary systems were in abundance throughout the universe, they just didn't have any proof until recently.

Originally posted by Donoso
David2012,
I'm really interested in seeing that show. Any clue as to what the name may be

It's called "Alien Planet". Pretty cool.
dsc.discovery.com...
I think they might be showing it again on Sat. May 14 at 8pm est.

(Sorry if someone else posted this info. I just started reading this thread and only got less than half-way through.)

Originally posted by Donoso
David2012,
I'm really interested in seeing that show. Any clue as to what the name may be?

Found it, it's called Alien Planet (d0h )
dsc.discovery.com...

I'm sure better links are to be found.

Originally posted by rai76

This artists rendering released by European Southern Observatory, shows the planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581 For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially as habitable as Earth, at left, with similar temperatures, researchers announced

[edit on 24/4/2007 by rai76]

If it is not already inhabited

If there was free oxygen on the planet, then it would have to have life, I think that's one of the few sure-thing markers for life. There would be no way oxygen could exist in its atmosphere without some type of organism releasing it through photosynthesis.

gravity may be simialar if the planet is bigger it may also have a different spin of its own it may spin counter clock wise and even may spin slower so it has the same gravity as ours.

What happens if the planet goes spinning left around the sun but the planet its self spins right so the oposing way?

i think this is great and one step closer to the world government finally growing up and telling us that there is life out there. This doesnt shock me at all if fact I am sure that they could have told us this stuff in the 80s if they wanted to let us know but they have been waiting.

Originally posted by MarkLuitzen
gravity may be simialar if the planet is bigger it may also have a different spin of its own it may spin counter clock wise and even may spin slower so it has the same gravity as ours.

What happens if the planet goes spinning left around the sun but the planet its self spins right so the oposing way?

Its presumed that the planet does not spin on itself..

Spin doesn't affect gravity, that's determined by the mass of the body.

So if a planet spun 1000x faster than earth and it was the same mass the gravity would be the same, right? How could we test this, is everybody sure on this one? Have you a link I could read?

hmm... a year in 13 days... lets start working there, a years sallary in 13 days sounds tempting...

Originally posted by rai76

This artists rendering released by European Southern Observatory, shows the planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581 For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially as habitable as Earth, at left, with similar temperatures, researchers announced

[edit on 24/4/2007 by rai76]

Which of these two planets is the earth-like one? It's the big grey one right? You can tell that it has what appears to be oceans and land, as well as very earth-like clouds and atmosphere. It just seems a little more grey-ish than our planet.

Wow, this is really awesome!

[edit on 23-5-2007 by ZikhaN]