Comments on: Five potential habitable exoplanets now

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:26:00 +0000

…Plutoquakes Rock…

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:23:08 +0000

…reply to rory… I agree there could be some big problems once we show up to investigate the surface.. Like what if no atmosphere, or one that is so violent with storms…or surface is unstable…or acid rain x10. I think by the time we fly a probe out to these distant spots, we need to know how to land devices that will build or fix a planet’s atmosphere to be earth like. You should watch this program at what they were able to dream up from a fun “what if” mission http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLfNe12BKE&feature=related

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:15:30 +0000

I still see lots of problems picking these “habitable” worlds… Wish they would try for some that had a better chance of Earth like conditions.

#1 don’t pick a planet that is tidally locked with its star.
#2 pick a planet that is orbiting a star like our sun (a lot more light energy vs. red dwarf).
#3 we need some better way to determine if there is liquid water on these potential rocks…. way too much guessing going on still (remember they were still arguing if Gliese 581g was even in existence a few months ago as it did not show up on everyone’s data plots).
#4 Maybe we don’t have as much time as I thought? I always thought we had about 4 billion more years with our sun, but now I understand our sun is growing a bit each billion years…maybe 10% or getting warmer… Wondering what happens in only 500 million years from now, if earth gets too hot or we mess up our atmosphere faster than I thought? we already seem to have sparked global melting… http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Solar_Life_Cycle.svg/2000px-Solar_Life_Cycle.svg.png

Yeah… 1 billion years should still be loads of time to get a few billion spaceships to fly out and inhabit some distant planets…but 1 billion years is a lot less than 4-5 billion. Maybe we get our singularity in 2045 so that could be a mute point, but I still have a bad feeling we may be trapped by speed of light issues and E=mc2 laws that keep us about 10 – 20% of speed of light with travel.

#5 I hope a giant meteor does not wipe us out before then also…. (gee that sounds so negative… and yes, if we find it in time I think we could all pull together to avert it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 08:45:58 +0000

Just because they are potentially habitable does not mean we expect there to be life. If there is life there, it is most likely bacterial. The chance of finding developed flora and fauna is still incredibly small.

By: rory macleod

rory macleod — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:08:58 +0000

two questions:what of the indigenous life-forms,possibly hostile,dangerous flora?dangerous fauna?what about the “heavy”gravitational pull, i.e.walking would be much like walking through a shallow swimming pool(same resistance to movement)?id go as an obsever to help catalog the new species(if there were a “stable “worm-hole of course).

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:34:24 +0000

this was interesting..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLfNe12BKE&feature=related

By: Steve M

Steve M — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 02:06:39 +0000

I sure hope you’re joking?!? Pluto is an icy rock with no 60 mile deep ocean or an ocean of any kind…nor a 60 mile thick ice covering an ocean. The heat coming up from a large core of potassium 40??? This suggests that the core is undergoing radioactive decay (such as Earth’s core) which is not. Once life started, the temp would be slowly declining??? Pluto is something like 55 Kelvin. Room temperature is roughly 300 Kelvin. The fifth moon Pluto possesses is new info, so where do you get the unusual inaccurate info from?

P.S. Earthquakes??? Come on, they would be called Plutoquakes:)

By: curtp41@gmailcom

curtp41@gmailcom — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:54:34 +0000

I think Disney already has dibs on Pluto.

By: Frank Norton

Frank Norton — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:58:11 +0000

I would think that the planet Pluto would be the safest and most likely of all planets for life. Consider a 60 mile deep ocean covered by a 60 mile thick ice covering, and the heat coming from up from a large core of potasium 40. Once life started, the temperature would be consistantly slowly declining, no threat of comet or asteroid collisions , no volcanos, earthquakes,seasons, and protection from five moons, and a part time icy rings when it exits the inner Oort cloud.

By: donald

donald — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:17:03 +0000

It would take some 20 million years to travil, What we need is a space craft that would fold time & space and a lot of beer!

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:35:50 +0000

One is a theme park planet. The other is an outlet mall planet. That’s how it is everywhere, man.

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:08:37 +0000

I think I’ve read this story before. It’s called Coyote by Allen Steele.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:46:21 +0000

Lets go bring alot of ciggs and beer

By: jimmy

jimmy — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 08:42:11 +0000

walmart has plans to build a store there, so must be habitable

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:09:25 +0000

..thanks for the great link to more info…. I did a quick copy and paste for some of the posters above…

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:08:02 +0000

….An Earth-sized planet with three times the mass of our planet would pull down on your body with three times the force of Earth’s standard gravity. That means if you weighed 120 pounds on Earth, you would weigh about 120 x 3 pounds on an Earth-sized planet with three times the mass, or 360 pounds.

But Gliese 581g also has a somewhat larger radius, so that also factors into the equation. A 120 pound person would weigh about 213 pounds on Gliese 581g at the lower end of the size and mass estimates. This all remains theoretical until astronomers can pin down the actual size and mass.

By: GatorALLin

GatorALLin — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:05:55 +0000

………..A spaceship traveling at a one-tenth of the speed of light would reach Gliese 581g within about 220 years, Vogt said. That would allow the spaceship to begin getting close-up pictures and a sense of the planet’s atmosphere.

By: Mr.x

Mr.x — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:53:52 +0000

Time to move!Wait, 20 lightyears? Better lend some books from the local library.

By: Scott Batchelor

Scott Batchelor — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:35:14 +0000

I can’t even afford the gas across town.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:23:52 +0000

If it has a composition similar to Earth’s ( Just a guess.) then it would have a mass of ~ 3 times our home planet. The mean effect of gravity given it’s radiius should be 1.3 -1.5 times Earths if the radius holds at it present estimate. If it’s density were slightly less, at say 4.6 grams/ cc, then it would be spot on.

By: Spikosauropod

Spikosauropod — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:38:14 +0000

At 1 gravity, it would take 6 years (ship time) to get there. If someone can build the ship, and no one will miss me for 44 years, I am ready to go.

By: Editor

Editor — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 22:44:37 +0000

Good questions. Distance is about 20 light years (our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, in 4.2 light years away). Space.com has a good
Q&A: http://www.space.com/9247-million-questions-habitable-planet-gliese-581g-12.html. I added this info.

By: Dan Robinson

Dan Robinson — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 22:14:21 +0000

Pictures imply we know something about the surface. Is this true? As I understand it, we only know orbital distnce, with maybe clues to temperature, mass and diameter. And we must a good guess on ditance from here, which it seems is never mentioned.