Newly Discovered Planet May be First Truly Habitable Exoplanet

Santa Clara U. ^ | 9/29/2010 | Tim Stephens

[JohnBovenmyer]

Winds and weather are apt to be atrocious, but there have been SF novels speculating about life under such circumstances.

[Amberdawn]

Good-Now, can we send all the leftards a one-way ticket?

[diamond6]

Obama needs to go check it out..... and never come back.

[Beowulf9]

The price of houses on the line!!!

[Abin Sur]

Winds and weather are apt to be atrocious, but there have been SF novels speculating about life under such circumstances.

In a recent novel I read, "Ark" by Stephen Baxter, there's a debate amongst the crew as to whether or not to settle on a tidally locked planet orbiting a red dwarf. One of the characters says something to the effect of, "We are not going to live on a Krypton!"

In the end they do just that, because it winds up being the best of a bad set of choices.

[gogogodzilla]

Are you kidding? That’s just about far enough away from Earth to keep liberals from interfering.

Now we just gotta find a way to get them to relocate.

[bunkerhill7]

There is Life on Newly Discovered Planet, First Truly Habitable Exoplanet, But Only on Saturday Night

[thecabal]

Sounds like they found Jinx

[Domangart]

English major in the Education department of J school. Willfully ignorant.

[NTHockey]

>>Ahhh... the perfect place to resettle Liberals!<<

Too close; too nice; too much like Earth. Preferably, we can find a planet some million(s) light years away. This planet should have gravity twice that of Jupiter(12 times that of Earth), the better to crush them. The atmosphere should be methane, argon and chlorine gas, giving them plenty to clean up. Temperature range should be -40 degrees at night to +165 degrees in the daytime, allowing LIBs to holler about global warming AND global cooling.

[exhaustguy]

I would want to know how long the planet has actually been in the goldilocks zone (ie planet formation and star stability). Wikipedia says the star is 7-11 billion years old.

We beamed a message to this star using a radio telescope. I am not too sure that I am comfortable with doing that. A focussed radio signal is much easier to pick up.

[Blood of Tyrants]

But three times the mass means you will weigh three times as much. The human body cannot stand that kind of gravity for long.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Okay, smartass, tell me how the human body would withstand a constant 3G pull on it?

[TalonDJ]

But three times the mass means you will weigh three times as much.

No it does not.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Gravity is proportional to mass of each, but inversely proportional to the square of the distance so the bigger radius compensates.

[Abin Sur]

But three times the mass means you will weigh three times as much.

Incorrect. Our moon has only 1/81st the mass of the Earth, but 1/6th the surface gravity. Jupiter has 317 times the mass of the Earth, and a surface gravity of 2.5 times ours.

I've seen estimates that this planet has about 1.5 times our surface gravity. Not particularly enjoyable, but survivable.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The force exerted between two objects is directly proportional to the gravitational constant times the mass of the two objects multiplied and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two objects.

F= G*m₁*m₂/r²

Triple the mass and triple the force between the masses.

[ShadowAce]

They finally found Kolob

[ShadowAce]

...inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two objects.

Here's what they are talking about.

With the larger diameter of the planet, a person standing on the surface is farther away from the center than we are here on Earth.

Thus, while the gravity would be stronger, it would not be 3X stronger.

[MrB]

First this:

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“The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common.”

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It does? It literally “tells us”? This is really muddled, wishful thinking.

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Secondly, your observation of it being tidally locked - this is a condition of having “the wrong type of star” for habitability. The star is too cold, and therefor the planet has to be too close, and a tidally locked planet is NOT habitable.

Nope, wishful thinking. This one here that we’re standing on is the only “Privileged Planet”, designed and placed especially so us humans can flourish AND EXPLORE creation. Habitability and observability conditions just happen to “coincidentally” be the same.