[Vretsu]

Hey, neat.

*goes back to fighting over oil*

[takashi]

because before today the human race was stupid. and after today, it will be less stupid.

[Mad Bomber]

I propose renaming the system "Ribos". 

Hey, the planet could bear life, and life (on Earth) is based on DNA and RNA, which are derivatives of the sugar ribose.

It's a bit of a head-scratcher, but it also involves FS, so...

[IceFire]

Question: Why haven't we found a planet like this before?

Its really hard to find small planets.  The astronomers doing this job are getting allot better and improving the equipment all of the time.  The first extrasolar planets (planes outside of our solar system) were super massive gas giants that make Jupiter look like a Mini Cooper next to a jumbo jet. After that they started to fine tune the methods and now there are hundreds of planets discovered.  There are probably many many more planets out there and the better we get at finding them the more we'll find that are probably similar in some way to Earth.

It'll be really fascinating to know if there are other planets out there with similar characteristics to our fair little planet or if most of them will be a fair bit different.  That said...if we were to find life on these planets...almost the same as Earth or somewhat different...I think we'll find a whole lot of the same sorts of things.  Earth has a very wide variety of life on it that can be found in nearly every tiny hole you can look into...I'd be mighty surprised to know that life was somehow radically different elsewhere.

[BlackDove]

Hey, it's Kobol.

[Charismatic]

What was the frist system that Terrans found and coloinzed before meeting the vasudans? ALtari was it? What system was one jump away form Sol? Delta surprenes? (SP)

Meh wheres that map.

[Snail]

What was the frist system that Terrans found and coloinzed before meeting the vasudans? ALtari was it? What system was one jump away form Sol? Delta surprenes? (SP)

Meh wheres that map.

Altair is a Vasudan system and is on the Vasudan side of space.

Probably Delta Serpentis, Ross 128, or Beta Aquilae. They met the Vasudans probably in Vega or Deneb.

[G0atmaster]

This is the first we've ever found a planet this small, due to a new type of telescope if I remember correctly.  Also, note that the planet is either a dry, rocky place, or completely covered in water.  We can't tell either way.  It's 5x as big as Earth, and it is REALLY freaking close to its sun (it goes around in 12 earth days).  It's very likely there's nothing there, the only significant thing, in fact, the only "Earthlike" thing about it is that it's the right temperature that water could be present in liquid form.
FYI.

The real amazing thing is, it's closer than anything else we've seen.  That's about it.

[Mobius]

This is the first we've ever found a planet this small, due to a new type of telescope if I remember correctly.  Also, note that the planet is either a dry, rocky place, or completely covered in water.  We can't tell either way.  It's 5x as big as Earth, and it is REALLY freaking close to its sun (it goes around in 12 earth days).  It's very likely there's nothing there, the only significant thing, in fact, the only "Earthlike" thing about it is that it's the right temperature that water could be present in liquid form.
FYI.

I know that the planet is 1.5x Earth and goes around its sun in 13 days.

[Snail]

It's sun is also a dying star IIRC.

[Mobius]

It's sun is also a dying star IIRC.

Bad thing...

Please post a link...I want to know everything!!!

[Snail]

Bad thing...

Not exactly, it's predicted it'll take a few hundred thousand or so years to go boom anyway.

(make that a few million? >>)

[Mobius]

Not exactly, it's predicted it'll take a few hundred thousand or so years to go boom anyway.

(make that a few million? >>)

Just wanted to know...

[Herra Tohtori]

What a misconception-filled thread...

Gliese 581c has a diameter of about 1.5 Earth diameters, or so they say. It also apparently has 5 times the mass of Earth, but due to greater radius, it would "only" have surface gravitational acceleration of about 2 g's. Not pleasant perhaps, but oh what an exellent place for space marine training center...

Also, the star Gliese 581 is not a dying star. It is a red dwarf star, which means that it is much smaller than our Sun, but consequently it uses it's hydrogen much slower than larger stars. Our Sun has main sequence life prediction of about 10 billion years - red dwarfs can shine relatively unchanged for hundreds of billions of years. That's one magnitude more time for life to evolve on that rock than Earth has had... and look what has happened only in about 4.5 billion years.

About the habitability. It resides on orbit that apparently hits the Goldilocks' zone - not too hot, not too cold for liquid water... but due to the puny nature of the central star that means it orbits the star much closer than for example Mercury orbits Sun. One orbital cycle lasts about 13 days, and it is very possible that the planet is locked tidally to it's central star, not unlike the Moon is locked to Earth as it rotates at the same time as it orbits Earth. This would obviously mean that the sunward surface would be way hotter than the shadow side (Captain Obvious to the rescue). Near the terminator there could however be a suitable zone for life. It's width would depend on how thick the atmosphere is. The thicker atmosphere, the better it circulates heat around the planet. Considering the planet's relatively large mass and surface acceleration, it is very possible that it indeed has even thicker atmosphere than our Earth.

So that means it is possibe for water to exist in liquid form on that planet. That doesn't mean there actually would be large quantities of water. Also, other characteristics such as magnetic field or lack of one can't really be determined at the moment.

What we can do is to start pinging the star system with some serious radio hardware, and then after 40 years or so we could start waiting for a response. Apparently they have had a lot more time to develop so I'd say if there's anything like our civilization, it either is there already or won't ever be. So start pinging it, and with any luck a respond will get here by my 62nd birthday...


...Or, obvious solution is to find subspace/hyperspace travellation means.

[Nico]

actualy, its on the real live news. and i heavily doubt we found vasudans. life on other planes could very well be bizzare compared to our own. they dont know whether its H2o in the oceans or not yet. as far as we know, the life could be silicon based.

They don't even know if it has oceans, actually.

[CP5670]

The real amazing thing is, it's closer than anything else we've seen.  That's about it.

That pretty much says it all. Although something even more amazing is the post above mine.

[Mobius]

What we can do is to start pinging the star system with some serious radio hardware, and then after 40 years or so we could start waiting for a response. Apparently they have had a lot more time to develop so I'd say if there's anything like our civilization, it either is there already or won't ever be. So start pinging it, and with any luck a respond will get here by my 62nd birthday...

I don't think it's correct. Our technologies enable us to detect radio transmissions, we all know that, but we gained this ability only recently. We will never know if there's(or there was)an evolved civilization until we get close to the planet.

You're giving for sure that all evolved life forms in the Universe are at the same technological level. Whoever lives on that planet might be primitive(no radio communications), too evolved for us(no radio communications, something we can't detect. This possibility is considered by many scientists) or...dead. Their civilization no longer exists(what could happen here in a few decades).

[Herra Tohtori]

I'm not assuming anything, I'm trying to estimate the state of that planet's possible life. Only assumption is that in relatively similar conditions life will emerge in relatively similar time. I think that's pretty solid estimation.

I don't remember how old exactly this star (and planet) is... (wikicheck)... estimation is that it is 4.3 billion years old. Seeing as how our own Sun is slightly older at 4.57 billion years, it means that there's no way of knowing what is going on there. It mainly depends on how fast the planet cooled down after being formed, and how long lasted until by change some replicating molecyle was formed. On Earth, first life left it's marks about 3.7 billion years ago - that's about 870 million years from the light-up of the Sun.


So, on Earth it has taken that much time for life to spin out relatively advanced culture with pre-requisites for observing radio signals and sending them to another star. On Gliese 581 it might take infinite time (if the planet is full of no-lifes so to speak), or shorter or longer time. Depends so much of conditiosn that we cannot analyze at the moment. In fact it is reasonable to assume that the planet took slightly longer to cool down to life-suitable temperatures because it is that much bigger and soforth...


One thing is sure, however - if there isn't anyone listening when our signals arrive...then it is very unlikely that there would be a civilization able to do it in a hundred years, or a thousand, or even in a million years. That's what I meant - if we don't get any response, it really isn't worth the trouble to keep one hell of an effective radio transmitter shouting it's signals towards the planet for a billion years until someone finally responds. And seeing how Earth will become unsuitable for life as we know it in about 0.5-1 billion years, it might not matter. For 40 years  it might be worth it to keep pinging, but if after the 40 years (and some) there's no respond, it's very likely there's not gonna be an answer on our life time, which means that it's more sensible to switch onto periodic ping mode... in cycle of 40 years, send a couple of days of hail message and some information, then wait, keep listening, and in another 40 years, send another message series.

The possibility that there was a radio-capable civilization but is no more is, obviously, very real. But also in that case the previous statement holds - if there's no advanced civilization now, it is highly unlikely they would develop the abilities and means to communicate with us just after we discovered the planet.

However, stranger things have happened, such as the life, universe and everything.

Obviously, if theres no answer, we have to send a star probe to check out the planet. Preferably a self-sustainable colony ship. Heck, I would likely volunteer for such mission if it was in any way technologically feasible. Also, referring to the impending destruction of Solar system in max. 5 billion years, that planet might be the last best hope of survival for Earth's life...


Although, it would suck pretty badly for the colony ship's crew members to notice that the planet isn't suitable for humans after a millennia-long journey...

[takashi]

i doubt other life would use our same radio tech.

[Fury]

This topic really belongs to the Pub.