Paging Sister Miriam...

[pendell]

... Astronomers locate the first habitable planet (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/29/AR2010092907706.html) outside the solar system. Admittedly it's tidelocked, so will only be inhabited in a narrow band, but so what? It's still probably more land mass than Russia has.

Somebody else will have to get the Hive and the other Sid Meier AC factions up there. The Lord's Believers will be there first! :wink:

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Haruki-kun]

Fascinating!

I wonder how long before we actually get to that planet. :smallfrown:

[Fri]

Meh, what we need to do is to make a steampunk flying city style civilization in venus, because I heard that there's actually a thin strip of habitable zone in its atmosphere.

Why steampunk? Because the economical way to have them is using baloons of course!

[factotum]

Admittedly it's tidelocked, so will only be inhabited in a narrow band, but so what?

*MAY* be inhabited in a narrow band--just because it's in the habitable zone doesn't mean life will have automatically formed there. In fact, answering the question of life being there or not would give us a better idea just how common life is in the universe, but that's going to take a while to find out!

[pendell]

*MAY* be inhabited in a narrow band--just because it's in the habitable zone doesn't mean life will have automatically formed there. In fact, answering the question of life being there or not would give us a better idea just how common life is in the universe, but that's going to take a while to find out!

You misunderstand. I wasn't thinking 'inhabited by natural life'. I was thinking 'able to be inhabited by human colonists'. The presence of spontaneous native lifeforms would be a bonus.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Aidan305]

Anyone else reminded of the planet Adumbria from "The Traitor's Hand" (The third Ciaphus Caine novel)?

[KnightDisciple]

While this is definitely interesting, it feels a bit misleading.

All we know is that the distance of the planet from its star is such that it could be habitable. Maybe.

We don't know the composition of the soil, of the atmosphere, etc. We don't even know if it has an atmosphere.

I'm all for scientists learning more about the universe. But this feels like journalists blowing things out of proportion.

There's just not enough data to say anything beyond "maybe possibly there is a chance there might kinda be life there".

[Pyrian]

I was thinking 'able to be inhabited by human colonists'. The presence of spontaneous native lifeforms would be a bonus.The presense of native photosynthesizers could go a long way towards providing a breathable atmosphere. :smallcool:

[Coidzor]

The presence of spontaneous native lifeforms would be a bonus.

and/or doom us all.

[Innis Cabal]

They've known about Giliese 581 for a while now...and knew it was an Earth-like habitable planet in the Goldilocks zone

[Flickerdart]

Didn't we have a campaign setting that was on a tidally locked planet? :smallcool:

[Starscream]

I wonder how long before we actually get to that planet. :smallfrown:

It's 20 light years away, so however long it takes us to learn to travel at the speed of light, plus 20 years.

So I'm not booking any vacation packages there in the near future.

[Cobalt]

They've known about Giliese 581 for a while now...and knew it was an Earth-like habitable planet in the Goldilocks zone

Well it does tell us that in the article- that they've been looking at it for eleven years. But that doesn't take anything away from the fact that it's awesome. And besides; most people had no clue. So there needs to be an article like this every once and a while to bring up the fact that we found a planet we could possibly live on without wearing a suit.

[factotum]

They've known about Giliese 581 for a while now...and knew it was an Earth-like habitable planet in the Goldilocks zone

I think that was a different planet (Gliese 581d?)--this one is newly discovered Gliese 581g. Same star, but this one is even more likely than the other one to be habitable.

[thubby]

i seem to recall them finding a bunch of potentially-habitable worlds not that long ago.
is this just something the news sites are rehashing or am i missing something :smallconfused:

[Recaiden]

Fascinating!

I wonder how long before we actually get to that planet. :smallfrown:

I predict 300 years.

Now, this is still wonderful. And even if the odds for life there, human or native, are small, well, it's a chance, which is a lot better than nothing. :smallsmile:

[mucat]

i seem to recall them finding a bunch of potentially-habitable worlds not that long ago.
is this just something the news sites are rehashing or am i missing something :smallconfused:

Most of the exoplanets they've discovered are either large gas giants, or orbiting very close to their stars, or both. This is because you discover planets by watching the star wobble back and forth slightly under the gravitational pull of a planet, so heavy, closely-orbiting planets are the easiest to find.

This is the first one we know of whose surface gravity and temperature would be in the range we would consider "habitable".

[Symmys]

Sweeet. Now all it needs is a less generic name than Gliese 581G, because that doesn't really conjure up images of space travel and the last frontier and such.
How about Loki?

[The_JJ]

I'm with OP. It's called Planet.

[mangosta71]

We don't even know if it has an atmosphere.
Actually, this one is directly addressed by the article. It's specifically called rocky which gives us an idea as to its density, and combined with its size indicates that its gravitational pull is sufficient to hold an atmosphere. And, of course, the article says outright that it has an atmosphere.

It's called Planet.
Wasn't Planet's official name Charon in the game?

As for Miriam, I can only hope that any expedition does not include the type of psychotic morons that would flock to her.

[Rockphed]

Personally, I propose "Goldilocks" as the name for said world in the event it ever actually gets confirmed as being habitable.

[SurlySeraph]

i seem to recall them finding a bunch of potentially-habitable worlds not that long ago.
is this just something the news sites are rehashing or am i missing something :smallconfused:

It's news every time we find a planet that's more potentially habitable than any we've found before. Finding a planet in the habitable zone, or one that's solid and relatively close to Earth's size, are both notable. This one's right in the habitable zone and only twice the size of Earth, which is the most Earth-like planet we've found yet. Plus it's quite close to us, which is definitely newsworthy.