New Earth-like planet just discovered?

We probably had not discovered it before because the planet has a such a large orbit. Maybe instead of 1 earth year to orbit, it takes 300?

 

Interesting video, I love news about space exploration or just new discoveries in our universe.

also, gliese 581 is a red dwarf star with I think 5 or 6 planets orbiting it and one of them is believed to be in the perfect place to be able to support life.

EDIT:I think I understand the video now.

This new planet is NOT orbiting between Earth and Venus. From the video, it says that it is a new found planet orbiting the Gliese 581 star that I was talking about before. There are at least six planets in that system; a,b,c,d,e,f and g. Planet "g" in the video is the one that is thought to have a high chance of being able to support life because the distance is between Earth and Venus from our own sun. So not too far and not too close.

The Gliese 581 system is however, 20.3 light years away.

Thought something seemed a bit off

 

ummmmmm wut?

im gonna look into this a little more seems like a sham to me.
ill be back

edit>> this planet isn't between venus and earth. however its the equivalent distance from a separate star smaller than our sun.

i Wikipedia'd it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581

appearently its 20 light years away

 

If only we could travel that fast.

Actually if you think about it, that is not that far, compared with 20 million like most of the stars and planets in other solar systems.

 

They discover planets by judging the "drag" they have on the star as they move through space.

Obviously they haven't actually seen it or anything, all they can judge to test it is the heat of it's star and relative position of the planet. All they can see is the star itself (which tells alot).

They haven't seen it because nobody has ever seen a planet outside the solar system.
They'd never reach the planet in our lifetime.

The speed of it's orbit is only relevant in the sense that it has a different effect on the pull on the star. However it will impact any seasons it may have.

And no, it's extremely unlikely we'd find life on that planet. There may not even be water.

And everything we know about it is what happened 20.3 years ago.

 

Well that's the problem. The planet is 20 light years away, meaning it would take twenty years to get there travelling the speed of light, which mankind hasn't accomplished yet unfortunately.

 

Over 186 thousand miles.

A second.

Fastest THEORETICAL spacecraft may travel at 180 000 miles an hour. That's 120 years.
Currently, maybe 1200 years with a standard spacecraft.

 

Somebody tell Grif; he'll be awaiting the Na'vi any time now.
On a side note; we need slipspace drives, NOW!

 

LOL, first off we don't need to send a living thing to a planet to know if its livable. We just need a rocket with a bunch of sensors and stuff. Secondly the fastest "Theoretical" (theoretically possible to build with current technology) craft was one that is propelled by harnessing the vibrations of supercooled magnets (or whatever) and highly ionized particles and could achieve (theoretically) 400,000 m/s. I'm trying to find the link..
New Horizons Probe attained a velocity of 150,000mph on its way to pluto.. and could have gone much faster if Nasa was trying. So 180,000 actually isn't that fast.
As for the lightspeed thing, there are a bunch of different theories that throw-down a bunch of hypothetical velocities, though none of them say we would be travaling the speed of light, rather we would be distorting space around us an making us seem physically less-massive to the universe (think mass-effect) thus to an outside observer we would be really big and traveling faster than the speed of light though to the pilot we would be cruising at a gentle 45,000m/s

 

You still need to send the "rocket with the sensors" >_> <_<
And a magnetic cannon? Doubt that will work well.
Fastest hypothetical speed was the horizon theoretically reaching 180, 000 mph, and yes, 30, 000 mph is a significant difference.

And that video is total bullshit, no offense.
There is a massive difference from a planet were liquid water can exist, and a planet with life.
The planet may not even have water at all.
The planet may be completely uninhabitable for alot of reasons.

 

You don't even need to go there. At a feasable distance (probably something a bit closer), a handful of x-ray, radio, infrared and visible light telescopes can accurately determine the composition of any body in space. From clocking orbital speeds, not only can the length of days/years be measured, but so can the objects mass. The data cant then be applied to spectrometers, which will determine the indivisible elements that make up the planet, and from both we can estimate densities. From there we can estimate gravitational strength on the surface, and then when utilized again with a spectrometer, we can determine the chemical composition of the atmosphere by filling in the blanks with our knowledge on the gravitational pull. From there we could even create models of it's environment, based upon the composition of it's atmosphere, based upon knowledge of elements on the surface. (this has already been stipulated for mars, hypothesizing an atmoshere would be artificially formed). Further spectronomy could pick up organic complounds of elements, that would back up the thesis.


Now after all of that, we would know the chemical composition of the planets core, surface and atmosphere. We would also have it's gravitational force at surface or any other level, toxicity of air and water, abundance of life, resources etc. This can all be (and is) done without having never even seen the planet in visible light. And because this planet is 20 light years away, who's to say it's still there?

 

This.. Though I would say we would have to be a lot closer to tell accurately whether the planet is "live-on" able. Seriously we are still discovering huge stuff about the moon, and not to mention Europa. the fact that we are having trouble determining the living conditions of things in our back yard essentially, makes me a little skeptical on our ability to observe an object that is 20 light years away.

 

I'm saying it didn't actually reach 180, 000, but it theoretically could, so I'm using that speed as an example for the fastest craft.

And no, there is not enough money.
NASA's budget is being cut slightly, and if you haven't noticed we aren't completely out of the recession (still large debts)

And its hard to use telescopes to detect a planet 20 light years away for obvious reasons.

And yes, if it is 20 light years away, that means our information is at least 20 years out of date.

Also, there is a ton of information on Europa and the moon and even the deep ocean compared to this planet. The difference is, people have had more of a focus on putting a man on the moon then a man on the bottom of the ocean. In order to find out everything, you'd need a couple of years on the planet studying it, which just isn't possible currently.

 

Burt Rutan sees the future of space | Video on TED.com

Makes good points (which at present are still in accordance) about how the commercial demand for exploration is breaking free from the militaristic and conservative view of NASA and corresponding constituencies. So brace for many a space-crash and some 18-holes on the moon.

 

This is right. I was reading about it when yahoo had an article on it. see below for link.

Could 'Goldilocks' planet be just right for life? - Yahoo! News

 

im pretty sure they can tell if a planet is rotating a star by using the wavelengths of desperate colors and such and such that i can't remember.

 

Well about time, now we can begin colonization of other planets. If its habital for us that is. We can only hope.