Gliese 581D

[jmurray01]

I just went onto the Yahoo! homepage a minute ago, and saw something amazing!

A habitable planet!

Gliese 581D looks like a fantastic discovery, and hopefully we'll find many more habitable planets.

Who knows, one day, with the right technology, we may be able to "move" to one of these planets to flee our dying sun!

[Hypernova]

Too bad that the atmosphere is most likely to be toxic to human because of extremely high levels of CO2, but we can fix that

[Superewza]

Saw this yesterday... roughly 2G? 20 Light Years from Earth? Orange, murky atmosphere?

So when do we get to meet these Vulcans?

[dale blue]

hI JMURRY01,

I see it on the news and it was discovered by the french.

It is about 20 light years away(rocket speed 300,000 years)and has possibly liquid water with high carbon dioxide levels and twice the amont of gravity.

Its in the goldilocks zone.

This is the kind of stuff thats got me into astronomy,wicked.

David

[Daniel-K]

I wouldn't be good there I'd weigh about36 stone lol

[jmurray01]

hI JMURRY01,

I see it on the news and it was discovered by the french.

It is about 20 light years away(rocket speed 300,000 years)and has possibly liquid water with high carbon dioxide levels and twice the amont of gravity.

Its in the goldilocks zone.

This is the kind of stuff thats got me into astronomy,wicked.

David

Me too!

[barkis]

I wouldn't be good there I'd weigh about36 stone lol

HehHeh! And I was cringing at my 28 stone.

It would rule out Golf, I struggle through 18 holes down here. Max. drive would only get 100 yards .

Ron.

[beamish]

mini-golf ?

[Pakmoto]

What would hail stone feel like? ouch!

Well I'm looking on expedia to see when the next available flight will be, should I click on in flight meals

[Cloudwatcher]

It seems that the planet's rotation is the same as it's orbital period........ could prove a bit of a bore.

[jmurray01]

I wouldn't be good there I'd weigh about36 stone lol

I weigh about 36 stone here!

[barkis]

I weigh about 36 stone here!

.

[brianb]

Gliese 581D looks like a fantastic discovery, and hopefully we'll find many more habitable planets.

Ummm. We don't know that the planet is habitable, we've just modelled an atmosphere containing rather a lot of CO2 which would give it a habitable temperature.

Now an atmosphere containing that much CO2 would be in chemical equilibrium (like the CO2 atmospheres of Venus and Mars); an unmistakable sign of life would be that the atmosphere was out of chemical equilibrium, like Earth's, which contains millions of times more than the equilibrium level of oxygen and only has low concentrations of CO2 because over several billion of years, life has removed carbon, sequestering it in fossil fuel reserves (which we are now doing our best to squander, but that's a different story).

Anyhoo, the point is:

1. If Gliese 581D does have enough CO2 to be in the goldilocks zone, it likely doesn't have life;

2. If Gliese 581D has life, there won't be sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to keep the planet warm.

The conclusion seems to be obvious.

I also have serious reservations about red dwarf stars being suitable for the evolution of life, whatever planets may exist in "goldilocks" orbits; the point being that red dwarf stars tend to have flares of similar magnitude to those on our own Sun; and being 20 times closer in order to receive sufficient average energy flux makes these flares more than a little hazardous.

Gravity is of course irrelevant for life forms until they leave the oceans.

[Shibby]

Awesome, so even if G doesn't exist, hope still lies with D!