Posted on 07/20/2012 11:14:12 AM PDT by Red Badger
New data suggest the confirmation of the exoplanet Gliese 581g and the best candidate so far of a potential habitable exoplanet. The nearby star Gliese 581 is well known for having four planets with the outermost planet, Gliese 581d, already suspected habitable. This will be the first time evidence for any two potential habitable exoplanets orbiting the same star. Gliese 581g will be included, together with Gliese 667Cc, Kepler-22b, HD85512, and Gliese 581d, in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog of the PHL @ UPR Arecibo as the best five objects of interest for Earth-like exoplanets.
Doubts about the existence of Gliese 581g appeared only two weeks after its announcement on September 29, 2010 by astronomers of the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey. Scientists from the HARPS Team from the Geneva Observatory, which discovered all the previously known four planets around Gliese 581, were not able to detect Gliese 581g out of their own data, which included additional observations. Further analysis by others scientists also questioned the existence of Gliese 581g in the last two years.
Now the original discoverers of Gliese 581g, led by Steven S. Vogt of UC Santa Cruz, present a new analysis with an extended dataset from the HARPS instrument that shows more promising evidence for its existence. The new analysis strength their original assumption that all the planets around Gliese 581 are in circular and not elliptical orbits as currently believed. It is under this likely assumption that the Gliese 581g signal appears in the new data.
“This signal has a False Alarm Probability of < 4% and is consistent with a planet of minimum mass 2.2M [Earth masses], orbiting squarely in the star’s Habitable Zone at 0.13 AU, where liquid water on planetary surfaces is a distinct possibility” said Vogt.
Based on the new data Gliese 581g probably has a radius not larger than 1.5 times Earth radii. It receives about the same light flux as Earth does from the Sun due to its closer orbital position around a dim red dwarf star. These factors combine to make Gliese 581g the most Earth-like planet known with an Earth Similarity Index, a measure of Earth-likeness from zero to one, of 0.92 and higher than the previously top candidate Gliese 667Cc, discovered last year.
“The controversy around Gliese 581g will continue and we decided to include it to our main catalog based on the new significant evidence presented, and until more is known about the architecture of this interesting stellar system” said Abel Méndez, Director of the PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Authors on the original paper are Steven S. Vogt, UCO/Lick Observatory, UCSC; Paul Butler, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution; and Nader Haghighipour of the Institute for Astronomy and NASA Astrobiology Institute. Their research is published online on July 20, 2012 in the journal Astronomical Notes, 333, No. 7, 561-575.
That chart won’t be in effect until the 23rd century. As of right no, though, ‘warp 5’ will be simply 5 times the speed of light until further discoveries are made in quantum mechanics and string theory that allow for more apparent speed............
It was once thought that Mercury was a planet that showed only one face to the Sun at all times.
From Wiki:
For many years it was thought that Mercury was synchronously tidally locked with the Sun, rotating once for each orbit and always keeping the same face directed towards the Sun, in the same way that the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet has a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, rotating three times for every two revolutions around the Sun; the eccentricity of Mercury’s orbit makes this resonance stable—at perihelion, when the solar tide is strongest, the Sun is nearly still in Mercury’s sky.[73]
The original reason astronomers thought it was synchronously locked was that, whenever Mercury was best placed for observation, it was always nearly at the same point in its 3:2 resonance, hence showing the same face. This is because, coincidentally, Mercury’s rotation period is almost exactly half of its synodic period with respect to Earth. Due to Mercury’s 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, a solar day (the length between two meridian transits of the Sun) lasts about 176 Earth days.[13] A sidereal day (the period of rotation) lasts about 58.7 Earth days.[13]
Simulations indicate that the orbital eccentricity of Mercury varies chaotically from nearly zero (circular) to more than 0.45 over millions of years due to perturbations from the other planets.[13][74] This is thought to explain Mercury’s 3:2 spin-orbit resonance (rather than the more usual 1:1), since this state is more likely to arise during a period of high eccentricity.[75] Numerical simulations show that a future secular orbital resonant perihelion interaction with Jupiter may cause the eccentricity of Mercury’s orbit to increase to the point where there is a 1% chance that the planet may collide with Venus within the next five billion years.[76][77]
It’s right next door via wormhole.
But first you gotta create the wormhole.
That’ll take another hundred years, at least.........
Re :I remember hearing years ago, that a 2% deviation in earth’s orbit would render it inhabitable.
I read a short time ago that there are at lease 13 earth parameters that if differed by the slightest, we would not be here
Hi Fred! I’m ready to go if we leave all the leftists behind.
Or a good archeological dig at Gisa.
Only un til and say you did. Click the pic.
120,000,000,000,000 miles!
If we start now we can get there is no time at all.
Actually the trip would be ~23 months- the warp factor is the cube root of the c multiple.
Oops, bad math. The trip would take about 7 1/2 weeks.
In a tidal lock there *might* be a habitable zone around the terminator but the weather would be pretty extreme.
Thanks bigheadfred.
Thanks Red Badger.
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I clicked the pic, and I’ve saved it to read later. It’s too late this evening to get into it now, but it does look quite appealing and interesting.
Thank you so much, Fred!
when they identify an exo entirely made of chocolate I’ll go
“Five potential edible planets now”
And only be cuz I like you. There are certain lies, misconceptions and otherwise total bullshit in some of the editorialism in the link.
Don’t be taken in by that.
They’ve gone to plaid!!
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