First habitable Earth like planet outside Solar System discovered

Zeenews.com ^ | April 24, 2007

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Or the Alcubierre (spelling?) one. However, the Orion Project is grounded in accepted physics. The technology is already there--general relatively was already taken into account when they designed it.

The thing is, unless it was launched from Antarctica or the poles, the radiation it would put into the air was estimated to kill a lot of people indiscriminately around the world.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

relativity....

[Spktyr]

Well, you’d have to build and launch the thing from orbit, I think.

[Samurai_Jack]

What makes us think that the Terra Nova will be uninhabited?

[metmom]

Sounds like a real paradise....

Their definition of *habitable* is waaaay different than mine.

[Red Badger]

What’s the formula for mass/radius to gravitation?

I don't know, I was just going by 1.5 times per the article............

[metmom]

The toll on the human body has got to be more than simply weighing more. A 100 lb person weighing 220 lb could still walk around, but it would seem that all the weight bearing joints would be under far more stress and would deteriorate much more quickly.

[Hatteras]

"However, unlike our Earth, this planet takes only 13 days to complete one orbit round its star."

Must get pretty windy...

[bmwcyle]

Start launching all liberals today. We must get them there.

[ukie55]

models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or covered with oceans,” he said.

The last time I looked, the Earth was rocky AND covered with oceans. Why do they think it must be one or the other, but not both?

They need a model to predict this?

They're just covering all the bases. That way, no matter what they find, they can say they were right.

[freedomson]

"Prepare to jump."

[Eye of Unk]

Because our planet depends on oil like a crack whore and with the likelyhood this planet never had any carbon based lifeform to create oil it dictakes that we will never make an effort to go there.
Its all about oil, take that figure out of any current event equation and the sum will change.
And the equation of having to have oil is what is castrating us from going to space.

[ukie55]

Does the mass of the planet directly corelate to the atmosheric pressure?

So what about Godebert's question? What effect would this have on atmospheric pressure, assuming an Earth-like atmosphere since it's supposed to be habitable.

[jmcenanly]

"I don’t know about “habitable”, though. I’d weigh 1000 lbs! " Then you must weight 450lbs here. LOL! A 200lb person would weight 444lbs on that planet, so the planet's not habitable. The story's poorly written, but the weight factor is 5/1.52=2.2.

Not by us, but it is the closest thing we've found, so far.

[nuke rocketeer]

5X the mass Earth,but only 2X the gravity....

[jmcenanly]

It is Gm/r squared, that is a Constant G times the mass over the sqare of the radius. This world is 8 times the mass of the Earth and 1.5 times the diameter, so I show a gravity of 3.6 times that of Earth.

Astronauts launching on the Shuttle take about 3 times the force of gravity, fighter pilots going through sharp turns take 9.

[Waverunner]

No - we need to send him with a documentary team
Lauria David, Michael Moore, Bil Moyers, Dan Rather
and some Senators with proconsular power such as
Kerry, Kennedy, and Schumer

[tcostell]

Are those accurate numbers? Do we really have any technology which will continuously accelerate for 5 years at a given rate, with a mass low enough to let it peak at .75 SOL?

If so, I'd be interested in what it would cost to send a probe. I know ... it would take generations to get the data, but so what? I say we should have a look around if we can.

[JamesP81]

Calling it “habitable” is an awfully optimistic claim.

Indeed. Liquid water doesn't do you much good if that water is also full of noxious chemicals and the atmosphere has high concentrations of carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide.

[JamesP81]

probably about 2 - 2.5G on the surface but if it's got liquid water it's got life.

That's an enormous assumption with no empirical data in our solar system (that we've found yet) to back it up.