[S-99]

It's a ****ing red giant for god's sake. So in order for it to have earth like atmosphere it would have to be a lot closer to a red giant as compared with our smaller but yet hotter sun.

After that, this is a significant discovery in detecting planets. They went from detecting only huge ass gas giants to a planet that's only 1.5 times bigger than our own earth. That's a breakthrough. The one thing i was thinking about was that what if we thought about using that planet for colonization say if we had the propulsion means. It wouldn't work, or it might work, that planet has roughly twice our gravity. I can see us humans staying away from that planet for colonization, or inhabiting it and just getting use to twice the gravity which is possible (man the people who would've moved there would be strong as ****). I think it's possible we could use that planet for colonization, humans are highly adaptive, plus not to mention, it's only twice our gravity. That's the best we can ask for given our solar system with really tiny planets and really big planets. Not enough gravity is bad for the body, too much gravity and it's too much strain on your body. Twice the gravity is a great bet, though i of course don't imagine people getting use to twice the gravity right off the bat. Might take a month or two, i mean it only takes astronaughts like a week for their blood cells to turn from spheres back into disc shaped **** when being re-introduced into a gravity environment.

[Herra Tohtori]

It's not a red giant.

It's a red dwarf, but seeing as "giant" hardly fits the context of the rest of your message I'd say you were talking about dwarf anyway and the giant thing is just a replacement error or whatever.

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with you S-99.

Two times the gravity would be tolerable for anyone in normal physical condition... might be a bit hard for the faint-hearted and very tall people to get the circulation to adapt to new things. Blood pressure would need to be higher to counter the increased pull towards the feet. You would get swollen feet much easier than on Earth. And the longer the journey from heart to head, the harder it would be for the heart.

Physically, muscles and stuff would adjust pretty soon to constant double-load. Osteoporosis would be a lot bigger risk though, so getting enough calcium would be more important than in space even.

Possibly the most difficult part of colonization would be to have the colonists who lived in space for several generations to adjust to g-loads... one way (if we had abundant propulsion) is obviously to make the ship accelerate at 2g to half-way, then decelerate at 2g the rest of the way. That way the colonists would be pretty much used to gravitational pull when they arrive. Assuming it's a self-sustaining generational colony ship.

[S-99]

Luckily i'm 5,7. So i wouldn't need to worry too much. Hail all the midsized humans

[Fury]

I don't see colonization becoming practical until faster than light travel becomes available. Back in the old colonization days, we were talking about voyages that took many years, the time frame was still conceivable as far as support infrastructure goes. Space colonization without faster than light travel would take generations, there wouldn't be support infrastructure to help the colonists in a case their resources prove insufficient. Communications would be another big issue, instead of years it would probably take decades, centuries or even generations to reach the other party.

For space colonization, I'd say that faster than light communications and travel is pretty much a requirement for it to be conceivable. When that happens, I have high hopes human ingenuity has made such distances relatively insignificant.

[Turambar]

hopefully, the discovery of this possibly habitable planet will encourage practical research into FTL technology, even if its kinda sorta impossible (according to the basic rules).

that's if we can calm down and stop trying to kill each other for a bit.

[Dysko]

I don't see colonization becoming practical until faster than light travel becomes available.

Lightspeed is considered a phisically unreachable speed. So no space colonization.
Unless we discover subspace

[Snail]

that's if we can calm down and stop trying to kill each other for a bit.

Hey, neat.

*goes back to fighting over oil*

[Fury]

I don't see colonization becoming practical until faster than light travel becomes available.

Lightspeed is considered a phisically unreachable speed. So no space colonization.

I'm no physics expert, but in the past many theories concerning physics have been proved wrong. So the theory about speed of light being the highest reachable speed may be proved wrong as well. Besides, even if speed of light is highest speed an object could possibly travel, I'm sure there are ways around that. Such as somehow bending time and space to cross vast distances with "relatively slow" speed.

[S-99]

You know there's the star trek way and the star wars way, and some other ways.
In star trek they achieve ftl speeds by getting the ship into subspace by first developing that famed warp bubble, without the warp bubble, no going into subspace to do ftl travel. Star trek is going into subspace, ftl, leave subspace...at destination.
Star wars works similarly but all it's principals are relatively unheard of unless you go to wookiepedia to find out exactly how star wars hyper drive works all the way. Anyway star wars is similar, the ships just sort jump into hyperspace for ftl, and come out of it at their destination.
After that there is yet again something similar, worm holes.

I don't know how many of you guys have seen event horizon. But the event horizon had a gravity drive that focused a narrow beam of gravitons (gravitons are still unproven to exist still...there goes star trek tractor beams out the window as well) with a focussed emp field that tears a hole in space and connects it to another point in space...pretty much creating a worm hole and travelling 0 distance to get to it's destination. Of course the event horizon ended up tearing a hole in space and our known universe opening up and entrance to hells universe (this is how event horizon is...good movie).

Anyway my point being is that in most scifi movies and series people travel at light speed or faster than light speed by not actually doing so. When you use a worm hole you travel 0 distance and it's considered an ftl travelplan, more accurately a lets-go-no-where-to-get-to-there plan.  After that star trek and star wars, god knows what speed the enterprise is actually cruising at inside of subspace, but outside of subspace the speed can be calculated as time how long it took to get there. But since subspace isn't normal space, that's what i meant by god knows what speed the enterprise is travelling inside of subspace. Same for star wars ships, who knows how fast they are going inside of hyperspace itself, but hyperspace lets people cross the galaxy measured in real time in real space in minutes.

Anyway, trying to travel lightspeed or faster but being weighed down by the laws of physics. It's like the guy says in event horizon, you can't change the laws of physics, but you can go around them. And that's quite possibly the only way in my mind that i see people going the speed of light by going around the laws of physics, such as creating a worm hole drive or something.

[Turambar]

gotta wonder how that stuff plays into relativity though.  if youre bending space to make yourself go faster, but still travelling at a normal speed relative to space, you probably still look like youre going hella fast from someone on earth.  we all know about that business when you travel at super high speed, time goes slower for you than for people not going super fast, but if youre bending spacetime to increase your speed, does it have the same effect?

[S-99]

Do research in wookiepedia. That actually plays a part in the star wars hyper drive technology. They had a certain type of shielding that goes into place to make sure you stay in sync with the normal time in the galaxy. There was a star wars story where ones guys hyper drive ****ed up, but he didn't know what ****ed up because it was working normally. He got to his destination but 100 years in the future when the empire took over, because his time displacement shields ****ed up and he didn't notice Or whatever they're called.

[perihelion]

Ignoring for a moment my skepticism that a 2-g environment is as minor a detail as a lot of you are making it out to be, there are other practical problems with this planet being habitable.  Gliese 581 is also known as the variable star HO Librae, a UV Ceti flare star.  I will leave to your imagination what solar flares are going to be like for a planet with a 12-day orbit around its primary.  Unless that planet has a monstrously thick atmosphere (which in itself could be a serious problem a la Venus) the surface will be seriously irradiated when g-581 flares.

My other concern is that this star is metals-poor.  According to one source I found, its metal content is only about half that of Sol.  In astronomy, everything heavier than hydrogen and helium is considered a "metal."  As above, so below; the implication is that this planet probably has only a trace scattering of heavier elements.  Earth life needs a lot of heavy elements in at least trace concentrations.  I'm no biologist, but I know that iodine is important in human biology, and there may be still heavier elements that are also needed.  Natively grown food would be deficient in all of those without heavy mineral supplements.  Those minerals themselves would be difficult to come by in this star system, though perhaps not impossible.  I'm reminded of Destiny's Road by Larry Niven, where on a world poor in potassium, the entire society ended up being held in thrall to those who controlled access to it.

Here's a link to a lot of quick and easy stellar data.  It is someone's pet project, not a published paper, so take it like you would wikipedia: with a grain of salt.
http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=HO+Librae

[Ashrak]

you dont need to go ftl to reach distant places, wormholes are probly the best bet, when we find out how to make em anyway

[shiven_warior]

if we do discover suspace do u think  will claim the right for it, seeing as they have the right over it in FS?
and btw u dont MAKE worm holes( well at least as far as i know)  they are a natrule thingy

[Topgun]

Dang!!! they found my house!

[S-99]

If anyone finds subspace, they should call it freespace

[takashi]

i found subspace once...there were mooses in it.

[S-99]

Yeah you found us subspace aliens...alaskans. We have many different breeds and forms. If only i had nickel for everytime a driver hit a moose in alaska/subspace. Reality is wierd here.

[Ace]

Its being a flare variable could be a problem for home-grown complex life.

As for human habitation? Definately possible though. Living semi-subterranean and having a good observation system is what would be needed.

[perihelion]

That's true, but if we have to go underground to protect ourselves from the radiation, what advantage does this planet have over, say, the moon?  Not only that, but it's got the gravity well from hell if you ever want to launch anything back off the surface.

I'm holding out my hopes for Alpha Centauri.  The fact that it is relatively close is a plus, but the really big deal is the primary star of that system could be Sol's identical twin.  They are both G2 V's, with AC-a having a slightly higher size and luminosity.  Unfortunately, there's a good chance that the interaction between Alpha Centauri A & B cleaned the system out of most planetary building material.  Still, I keep my finger's crossed.  Orbits within AC-a's habitable zone would be relatively stable.