Here's the link:

Gliese 581 C

 

Another earth just a smile away. Although it is 5 times more massive than earth, I would surmise that there are smaller planets in this system beyond detection.

I got all excited about this planet when I first read about it, but having calmed down a bit, and reading some more about it, it's still a great find but not in the most ideal of locations for life as we know it.  The star it orbits could be a flare star, the planet could be tidally locked, and the atmosphere, if it existed, might have been burned off.  Some have calculated that the surface gravity would be about 2g, so on the upper limit ( I read somewhere, can't remember where) for forming any kind of land life that is carbon based. 

Right now we don't know the answers to all of those questions, but they will be looking as close as they can at this one for quite a while.  Can't wait to hear more about it.

One of the most exciting thing about this discovery is that we have actually got the technique to find more of them, it's now just a matter of time.

I curse those fools who cancelled or delayed the TPF mission ... know who I mean?

here some other details: http://oklo.org/

Tuugii

More info on the entire system:

We report the detection of two new very light planets orbiting the low metallicityMdwarf Gl 581, already known to harbour a 15.7M closer-in planet (Bonfils et al. 2005b). The high radialvelocity precision reached with the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-m telescope enabled these discoveries. The first planet, Gl 581 c, is a 5.1M super-Earth at a distance of 0.07AU from the star. Its mass is the smallest found so far for an exoplanet. At its separation from an M3 dwarf, the planet resides in the habitable zone of this low luminosity star. With a radius close to 1.5R, the planet is the closest Earth twin to date. The HARPS radial velocities also reveal a longer-period planetary companion of mass 8.2M, on a 84.4-d period orbit. Further measurements are planned to completely ascertain the 3rd planet, and a photometric followup will fully check the intrinsic stability of the star on long timescales. The two new very low-mass planets further support statistical trends already outlined in the literature: i) Small planets (Neptune mass and below) are more frequent than giant planets around M dwarfs (6 very low-mass detections against 3 Jovian planets). This result was significant at the 97% level before the detection of the two new Gl 581 planets (Bonfils et al. 2007), even without accounting for the poorer detection efficiency for lower-mass planets. ii) The fraction of detected Neptune (and lower-mass) planets around M dwarfs is much larger than the corresponding ratio for solar-type stars (Bonfils et al. 2006). The absolute numbers of detections are similar, but the number of surveyed solar-type stars is an order of magnitude larger. This may be an observational bias due to the lower mass of M-dwarf primaries, or truly reflects more frequent formation of Neptunemass planets around M dwarfs. The factual conclusion remains that Neptune-mass planets are easier to find around M dwarfs. Recent planet-formation simulations (Laughlin et al. 2004; Ida & Lin 2005) suggest that planet formation around lowmass primaries tends to produce lower mass planets, in the Uranus/Neptune domain. Formation of lower-mass planets is also favoured for solar-mass stars with metal-poor protostellar nebulae (Ida & Lin 2004; Benz et al. 2006)2. Gl 581 is a 0.3M metal-poor star, and its detected very light planets are thus just what was expected around this star. Additional detections of very-low mass planets will help understanding these 2 converging effects. From both our observational programmes and planet formation simulations, very low-mass planets seem more frequent than the previously found giant worlds. They will thus provide preferential targets for space photometric transit-search missions like COROT and Kepler, and for projects like Darwin and TPF-I/C looking for biotracers in the atmospheres of habitable planets. Acknowledgements. The authors thank the different observers from the other HARPS GTO sub-programmes who have also measured Gl 581.We would like to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation (FNRS) for its continuous support to this project. 2 Note, however, that there is no general consensus. Kornet et al. (2006) suggest that smaller-mass primaries have denser disks, which would favour giant planet formation. Gravitational instability might also form super-Earth planets around M dwarfs as well (Boss 2006).

The above is just the conclusion from the paper in this link:

http://exoplanet.eu/papers/udry_terre_HARPS-1.pdf

I recommend reading the whole thing.  It makes the system look stable, and the star itself looks like a relatively stable red dwarf, ie not many massive flares ... to be confirmed though.  Good news for the chances of life on that planet I think.

I would wait til there is capability to actually photograph this planet to see if there's water or not. This would be the best candidate by far to send a probe(I know,it probably would take quite a while to get there and quite a while to send back images and data LOL)

Bert wrote:

I would wait til there is capability to actually photograph this planet to see if there's water or not. This would be the best candidate by far to send a probe(I know,it probably would take quite a while to get there and quite a while to send back images and data LOL)

They might be able to analyze the light as the planet passes in front of the star ... if we are at the right angle to see that. It's amazing how much they can find out about atmosphere and composition just from that. 

As for photographing it directly, there are techniques now that would allow them to do that, but they need something to put the instrument that does it on.  I'll see if I can find the link that shows the photographic technique that could be used.

As for probes, right now it isn't feasable to send one.  At the speed of light it would take 20 years earth time (or more accounting for acceleration and deceleration) to get there, then another 20 for the signal to reach us.  We could do a lot in 40 years in terms of getting instruments here more capable of seeing the planet directly I think.

With a 13 day "year" it would almost certainly be tidally locked with the star. 

I heard 1.6 g would be the gravity, not too bad for small animals.  Even 2 g would not be bad.  I wouldn't expect anything as big as an elephant though with that kind of gravity.

 

jsmoody wrote:

With a 13 day "year" it would almost certainly be tidally locked with the star.  I heard 1.6 g would be the gravity, not too bad for small animals.  Even 2 g would not be bad.  I wouldn't expect anything as big as an elephant though with that kind of gravity.

Agreed.

Wouldn't it be strange to see a big planet with tiny little creatures running around due the the higher gravity? 

I read somewhere that 2g was an upper limit for land based animals as we know them. I'll try and find that link, can't remember the exact details, and whether it was just speculation or based on real physics. 

Life there could still be "big" just not heavy. I suspect if evolution got underway on this world some life forms would see an advantage in becoming taller, or larger. Therefore, it probably would happen.

Birds on Earth need to be lighter than other animals their size, so i'm sure that animals on this world could evolve to be light weight. Birds have porous bones for example among other things.

If there are taller life forms, they could well be light and spindly. But, i would suspect they would be flat and low to the ground if life is in an early stage of evolution.

This planet would be around 2 billion years old? If it has a magnetic field, then even if it is tidally locked there should be at least some comfortable zones. 2 billion years is long enough for life to evolve.

Also, you cannot rule out the prospect that this world has been discovered before, by a civilization much closer to it. So, life there may not be native!

That's what is so great about this discovery, and the ones that will surely follow it. It has stimulated this kind of discussion. It will have possibly also got some future engineer working already on some advanced propulsion theory or concenpts for space travel.

Hopefully finds like this can somehow shake human kind out of the rut it is in, and we can get back to what is after all our basic human nature, i.e wondering what is over the next hill, what is beyond the valley, or what is on the next island. the kind of curiousity that made modern humans what they are, before we got stuck where we are today, going around in trivial circles!

I've read that the star is actually around the age of our sun, so the 2 billion years was a low estimate.  And if they have estimated the diameter to be too small, if for example the planet was 2 x diameter and 5 x mass of earth, then the gravity at the surface would be 5 / 4 x earth gravity or 1.2 x earth gravity. 

A lot about this find is speculation.  I also hope that it will light some sort of fire under NASA to bring the TPF and other planet finding/viewing techniques back to being a priority ... over going to mars for example.  Mars can wait, until our star blows up as far as I'm concerned. 

I would be very pleased to see planet finding hardware given a bigger budget. But to say that aspect of space exploration should recieve more than solar system exploration seems a bit strange.

To abandon the planets on our doorstep, which we have only just started scraping the surface of ( literally in some cases ) in favour of ones we will never be able to get to for god knows how long is wrong.

Are you talking about manned space flight or robotic exploration? Either way, exploring the worlds in our back yard may help when we really begin racking up discoveries of this extra solar kind.

All exploration of space is vital as far as i am concerned. Sadly there is not enough money being put into it. If i had to make a sacrifice as to which one had to make way to produce needed funds, i would go for the most costly. Manned space flight and the international space station would be my choice for the chop. In favour of a large robotic armada to the planets and worlds of the solar system, and a new generation of space telescopes and planet hunters. I feel the scientific return per dollar, or pound, or whatever spent, would be much greater.

 

Anth-Martian wrote:

I would be very pleased to see planet finding hardware given a bigger budget. But to say that aspect of space exploration should recieve more than solar system exploration seems a bit strange. To abandon the planets on our doorstep, which we have only just started scraping the surface of ( literally in some cases ) in favour of ones we will never be able to get to for god knows how long is wrong. Are you talking about manned space flight or robotic exploration? Either way, exploring the worlds in our back yard may help when we really begin racking up discoveries of this extra solar kind. All exploration of space is vital as far as i am concerned. Sadly there is not enough money being put into it. If i had to make a sacrifice as to which one had to make way to produce needed funds, i would go for the most costly. Manned space flight and the international space station would be my choice for the chop. In favour of a large robotic armada to the planets and worlds of the solar system, and a new generation of space telescopes and planet hunters. I feel the scientific return per dollar, or pound, or whatever spent, would be much greater.

I agree, and I should have been more specific.  I definitely think we should continue to explore our nearest neighbors, and definitely should get moon base going, for research, practice etc.  I just think that planning to send a manned mission to mars is too soon, and cutting funds to other science projects, like the TPF, is taking a step backwards, not forwards.  Just my opinion ( and I totally agree with your last paragraph ).

I think the real purpose of space exploraton is to look for life.  Either directly or indirectly.  This discovery has excited people because it's the most Earth-like planet yet found around another star.  Yes, it could be centuries before we would have the technology to go there, maybe millenia.  But I think we should focus a lot of resources on looking for Earth-like planets.  Before too long, we may have the ability to get spectra of extrasolar planets.  When we do, I guarantee you the main thing they'll be looking for is the presence of oxygen.  There is only one natural cause of an oxygen bearing atmosphere, life.

I don't think exploring our own back yard should take a back seat to extra solar planet hunting but I do think we should put a lot of resources into it.  So far it appears there may be no life in our solar system other than here on Earth.  If there is, it's probably pretty simple.   Our best hope lies with finding other planets around other stars that are in the habitable zones.

As technology improves I think we'll make some great discoveries.

 

 

 

jsmoody wrote:

I think the real purpose of space exploraton is to look for life.  Either directly or indirectly.  This discovery has excited people because it's the most Earth-like planet yet found around another star.  Yes, it could be centuries before we would have the technology to go there, maybe millenia.  But I think we should focus a lot of resources on looking for Earth-like planets.  Before too long, we may have the ability to get spectra of extrasolar planets.  When we do, I guarantee you the main thing they'll be looking for is the presence of oxygen.  There is only one natural cause of an oxygen bearing atmosphere, life. I don't think exploring our own back yard should take a back seat to extra solar planet hunting but I do think we should put a lot of resources into it.  So far it appears there may be no life in our solar system other than here on Earth.  If there is, it's probably pretty simple.   Our best hope lies with finding other planets around other stars that are in the habitable zones. As technology improves I think we'll make some great discoveries.

Ya.I agree,the greatest discovery of all time:An Extrasolar Icy Pluto whose orbit is 100% cleared and has 3 moons.

This is a great discovery and I hope this leads to further advancements in our rocket science and radiation areas.  Would love to one day see us send even a probe to this system.  Granted, even if we ever broke light speed, it would be 20 years before it reached the system :( but, I feel we are a LONG ways off from even making that breakthrough.

 

However one can dream.  This does give us the means to make new discoveries and who knows what else is out there. 

mstrozier,

This does give us the means to make new discoveries and who knows what else is out there.

  Spot on old chap.

A whole new land scape/s hopefully,  no pun meant;  though I think having Birthdays every 13 days might be a bit much eh.!?

You could have a birthday party every 13 days because that's how fast this new planet circles its sun-like star. But watch the cake -- you'd weigh a whole lot more than you do on Earth.

   Which brings up a rather serious topic matter...What life span would any being,  for want of a better word,  actually  have  then.?  And would they die off sooner.

Which brings up something else too, since a  human takes nine months before she/he  is born, how long would the gestation period be for those living on that planet be, or us, if and when, we decide to colonise the place.?

Answerers please anyone.?

 

what about micro-life how many g's can they handle?

Aquatic life wouldn't be affected much by the stronger gravity.

so this planet can support life? water? air?