New Planet??????

Question

How long do you think it will take to get an orbit on the planet? and Do you think it might be habitable???

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11013519/

Answer 1

The new planet found is near the red star Gliese 581, the planet name is 581c I think.
I guess now that it has been found, most resources might be spent on getting more details. They already know it doesnt revolve on itself actually, and takes about 13 days to revolve around Gliese 581 (its "sun", since it is a red star, less energetic than our sun but now believe to be able to sustain enough energy for life to occur on planet near it). It is 14 times closer to its red star (sun), gravity is 2.2 times higher than Earth and it is about 5 times bigger in mass. However, it is not sure if it is rocky in nature or a ball of ice.
Apparently from the 1st site, they think it would take up to 20 years to know for sure if there is any life on 581c!!!

Habitable...well, that is always possible if all required parameters are fulfilled (water, carbon, temperature, atmosphere...), then there is a chance that life can be present and sustained. But apparently, Mars is also part of those planets that have all the required parameters and still...no life there. You could argue that since life "happened" before (Earth), it can happen again!

Answer 2

Planet 581-C is likely habitable in some form, though perhaps no more immediately habitable than Mars. Regardless, at 120 trillion light years away we currently have no transportation technology that can reach the new planet in a human lifetime.

Should something catastrophic happen here on Earth though, perhaps the new planet in orbit around the red dwarf star Gliese 581 might be a candidate for emergency colonization in the future.

Answer 3

Yes, it's an exciting find. But just because it seems to have all the requirements to support life, doesn't actually mean it does. And it's still a very, very long way from us (something like a trillion, trillion miles) so we won't be going there any time soon - if that's what you mean by get an orbit on it.

Answer 4

Even if there was life, at what stage of evolution would it be? We would have to be very lucky for life to have evolved to our level of intelligence and or just beyond that.
Most probably if life is shown to exist it will be pretty low down the evolutionary scale. It could even be that intelligent life once existed, but was wiped out thousands of years ago.
All is possible, and all we can do is wait for an analysis of the planet's spectra to give us a clue.

Answer 5

its a 120 trillion miles away

just to give you an example of that distance..the suns 93 million miles away and it takes 8 minutes moving at the speed of light(186,000 miles per second) to get to earth. so how many times does 93million go into 120 trillion?

we wont be reaching that for a million years

Answer 6

its given as a 13 days and the article in it said that people can reach birthdays faster and unlike earth the new planet which is called C is not having rotations that means no day and night
oh!! its cooooool i mean awesome planet

Answer 7

Nothing that will happen to earth in the next 100 years will see us evacuating the planet so forgetaboutit.

Answer 8

probably withini the next 30 or so years, since its far away from OUR sun, it may be too cold to sustaini our life, but may contain other lifeforms capable of withstanding ectreme temperatures, Scientists claim that there's a good chance of water on the planet too :-)

Answer 9

no one for sure. even the scientists who discovered it just take an educated guess on its environment due to the fact that its very far, more than a billion miles away.

Answer 10

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