Posted on 10/16/2010 4:52:14 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Despite the doubts raised recently over the existence of the potentially habitable alien world Gliese 581g, the planet's co-discoverer is standing behind his find.
Steven Vogt, leader of the team that detected Gliese 581g, said he respects the work of the researchers who questioned the planet's existence yesterday (Oct. 12). He said he cannot comment on the scientists' results, since he hasn't seen their data.
But he has confidence in his own team's conclusions... Vogt added that he looks forward to reading the other team's results when they're published in a peer-reviewed journal. He's not necessarily expecting Gliese 581g to be yanked off the list of extrasolar planets, though.
"In 15 years of exoplanet hunting, with over hundreds of planets detected by our team, we have yet to publish a single false claim, retraction or erratum," Vogt said. "We are doing our level best to keep it that way."
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
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I think given the vast quantities of galaxies and stars that many earth-like planets surely exist. To me the question is not whether they exist but rather the liklihood that they exist relatively ‘nearby’ and close enough to even matter to us
Until we can greatly exceed the speed of light (if even possible), there are no ‘possible’ Earth like planets even close enough.
Here’s the funny part. Even if we discover an ‘Earth like’ planet ‘relatively’ near, it may already be gone.
My understanding is that our own equipment could only discern our own signals out to about 4 light years. I suspect all that could be discerned from a farther distance would be an odd intermittent radio hash.
Thus any signal from life on other planets would require equipment at least a magnitude stronger (better?) than ours.
Yep, and all this search for earth-like planets is about as useful as trying to determine the number angels that can dance on the head of a pin. Interesting but worthless information.
Not necessarily. If there are Earth-like planets within say 10 light years and we were able to achieve 1/10 the speed of light then we could reach them in 100 years. But it does make my earlier point that only those relatively close to Earth - a tiny portion of the universe - are of any serious interest in a discussion like this. God apparently spread us apart on purpose and for good reason.
Thanks plain talk.
The distance limit in 1960 was in the area of 4 ly. Twenty years later or so it had risen to better than 10 ly (which is obviously more than 2.5 times as much space that could be listened to), and sensitivity has risen a lot since then. The next big leap *may* be radiotelescopy from the “dark side” of the Moon.
You raise a good point. We are talking dim distant future as you say anyway and probably long before we attempt to reach a star we would probably inhabit Mars which would be a massive job in itself.
Also - even if our best remote tests indicate a planet circling a star is a perfect clone we could find that it might require a self-contained atmospheric dome anyway to survive anyway because of deadly compounds in the atmosphere, deadly radiation or who knows what. And those things might not be fully understood until a crew reached that planet. This means they would have to plan for worst case scenario and come equipped to not fully rely on the atmosphere. An expedition to a star likely comes long after man has destroyed Mars and every other possible place of habitation in this solar system or has to flee other groups of man just to survive.
I used to live on an "Earth like" planet...
If they are anything like us, then God spread us that far to keep us from wiping out each other's civilization.
That speed-of-light limitation was a pretty good idea, too....
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