Gliese 581 G "Zarmina"

[CABAL]

A planet has been discovered named Gliese 581 g, or unofficially Zarmina after the wife of one of the co-discoverers. It orbits the red dwarf Gliese 581 in the Libra constellation and is 20 light years from Sol. Now onto the good stuff.

Gliese 581 g is located almost exactly in the middle of the habitable zone for humans based on the distance from its sun and its sun's temperature and size. It is between 3-4 times the mass of Earth and slightly larger in diameter, easily allowing it to hold an atmosphere without having so much gravity that humans wouldn't be fairly comfortable. One orbit is 37 Earth days, though it is approximately 10 times closer to its sun that Earth is to Sol, meaning it moves at about the same speed.

Interestingly, Gliese 581 g is tidally locked, meaning that one side always faces its sun. The sun side is estimated to be around 160°F (71°C) while the dark side is estimated to be around -25°F (-32°C) with the twilight region being a comfortable Earth like temperature.

Considering the mass, density, and temperature it is likely that Gliese 581 g could have liquid water on its surface. The way it fits into what we know about the requirements for life implies that, assuming there is water, the chances of the planet being able to sustain life are spectacularly high. Co-discoverer Steven Vogt claimed "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."

So, what do you all think about the planet?

 

[Majestic]

Remus anyone?

Thanks for posting this Cabal. I hope one of the nations set up a probe to go visit this planet, see if it is habitable and if so follow it up with a man mission to colonize the planet and set up a human colony. It's what we really need as a species.

I know this is a long process, 20 years to get there, 20 years to get word back from the probe, another 20 to send a man mission (taking away the time it would take to set-up). But if done right in say 70+ years we could have an off world colony. Most of us won't be around to see it unfortunately, but our children and grand-kids would be.

 

[Syf]

That is good news. However, it is still an "educated guess" if in-fact this planet contains water, or life-forms ( I reserve life-forms to include single-cell organisms).

But on the note of there is a high chance, I would say that we need to get a good look at this planet.

The downside of all this, is the **20 Lightyears**

While on the galactic or universal scale, that is next door. However, with the most advances of propulsion systems, it would take no less than 100 years for a one-way trip, and 20+ yrs for any pictures, etc to be returned. As much as I love star trek and all, currently, FTL is fiction.

While I believe we should continue to explore the stars even if we can't get out there and go there, I think this reminds us that we only have 1 earth. Our fail-safes could be the Moon and even Mars, we still need to develop them as off-world colonies before we consider spending a load of resources to go outside of our star system.

 

[Amateur]

Well, I'm of the opinion that if there's a chance then we should go for it - and this seems like one of the best chances to date.

I tell you, if we had sensible people in government the world over we'd halve the military budget and quadruple the exploration one across the board.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

The program is still in its infancy; some information about planetary geology and atmosphere would be needed of course

A 20 light year travel would take quite some years above 100 to get to the planet however. It would take just about 90,200 years at the current fastest velocities attained by a spacecraft (which doesn't even include gravitational stuff - aka, the time needed to accelerate or decelerate).

 

[CABAL]

That is good news. However, it is still an "educated guess" if in-fact this planet contains water, or life-forms ( I reserve life-forms to include single-cell organisms).

I thought that the 100% chance of life seemed overly optimistic. Though if it has water it would probably be capable of supporting life.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

Well, he did say "100% chance of life" . Key weasel-word

 

[Hellkite]

Lets not take it out of contexts he said was

"I'm not a biologist, nor do I want to play one on TV. Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100%. " Vogt

The thing is that theoretical models of tidally locked worlds predict that under some conditions, volatile compounds such as water and carbon dioxide, if present, might evaporate in the scorching heat of the sun ward side, migrate to the cooler night side, and condense to form ice caps. Over time, the entire atmosphere might freeze into ice caps on the night side of the planet. but however, the amounts of water and carbon dioxide present on the surface of Gliese 581 g are unknown. But Alternatively, an atmosphere massive enough to be stable would circulate the heat more evenly, allowing for a wider habitable area on the surface.

Given The second law of thermodynamics

Consider two isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space, each in thermodynamic equilibrium in itself (but not in equilibrium with each other). Then let some event break the isolation that separates the two systems, so that they become able to exchange matter or energy. Wait till the exchanging systems reach mutual thermodynamic equilibrium. Then the sum of the entropies of the initial two isolated systems is less than or equal to the entropy of the final exchanging systems. In the process of reaching a new thermodynamic equilibrium, entropy has increased (or at least has not decreased). Both matter and energy exchanges can contribute to the entropy increase.

In other words "spontaneous natural processes increase entropy overall."
IE heat can spontaneously flow from a higher-temperature region to a lower-temperature region

This would set up a convection current in the planets atmospheric if the density was enough to hold the heat

-------

Yep have Bachelor of Science degrees in engineering science and aerodynamics, form the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs

 

[Starfox1701]

There is also the fact that we have no predictors for NON-carbon based life. Thereis is no way to know what conditions that we find unliveable that it would thrive. In either case life has provin to my satifaction that it can inhabit just about every corner of the universe it choses to.

 

[CABAL]

So, apparently this planet, and Gliese 581 D, do not exist. The "planets" were discovered via Doppler spectroscopy, which uses the fact that a planet's gravity naturally shifts the position of its sun as it orbits, and by extension causes the light of said sun to red and blue shift from the perspective of a static observer. By observing a star, you can locate an orbiting body. However, the technique can be subverted by magnetic activity bending the light, which is apparently what happened here with magnetic activity on the surface of Gliese 581 looking like the expected red and blue shifts.

According to Suvrath Mahadevan, "These two Goldilocks planets that people have been talking about, unfortunately, based on our research are not real," and, "What was previously thought to be a planetary signal was actually caused by stellar activity,"