How awesome is that?
2007-04-28 11:11:09 · 35 answers · asked by Anonymous in Entertainment & Music ➔ Polls & Surveys
Pretty awesome, especially when you consider the star, an M-class dwarf, is a more laid-back kind of star than our sun is...lower output but older and capable of going on for a lot longer than our sun can. If our sun were a 100-watt light bulb, this red dwarf star would be the 15-watt bulb in your fridge, and those last *longer* relatively speaking.
And this is important because it means that water's likely been there on Gliese 581 c (if I recall the new planet's name correctly) longer than it's been on Earth, improving the odds that life would develop, and evolve into something intelligent.
Just keep in mind though, if their estimates of the planet's mass are any indication (5 times that of earth), and it ends up being a terrestrial (earth-like) world, of roughly 50% larger size than ours....well, the world's going to have more in common with "Krypton" from the comics than with Earth. Red dwarf star, higher gravity, you know....
Not to mention, it's about 100 light-years away, meaning the planet we are seeing now is a 100 year old image. The good news is, their view of us is the same.....they see earth as it was in roughly 1907, assuming they know where to look, and that they are looking with something like our technology.
But yeah, it is pretty spiffy, awesome stuff. ^_^ Life in our neighborhood, and such a different world too!
2007-04-28 11:28:01 · answer #1 · answered by Bradley P 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Awesome indeed. If there are more stars that grains of sand on all the beaches, and most of those stars have planets like our star (Sun), even if the odds are one in a million that one of those planets will have life, then there are a trillion planets with some form of life.
2007-04-28 11:17:37 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's possible that life could exist on the new planet
2007-04-28 11:13:28 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yeah, I totally think it is possible. Lots of things are. Just because water is a must for us, doesnt mean that there are single-celled organisms that can live without it on other planets and places.
2007-04-28 11:13:38 · answer #4 · answered by blah 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
i honestly believe that life could exist on any of the planets just because a planet is too hot or cold for us on earth does not mean that there is not life on another planet. the life on another planet would have addapted to its climate.
2007-04-28 11:19:27 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
It is very cool, all we really need now is an aircraft that can travel about 120 trillion miles (240 trillion total) in less than someone's lifetime suppling them with enough supples to last them for the amount of time in space.
2007-04-28 11:15:32 · answer #6 · answered by sherbert 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sure. But I'm still looking for intelligent life on this planet, though.
2007-04-28 11:13:01 · answer #7 · answered by Enduringwisdom 4 · 3⤊ 0⤋
i think life could exist there but they would be different than us and older than us because their sun isn't as hot as ours and one year is 13 days on that planet.
2007-04-28 11:16:11 · answer #8 · answered by angeloflove 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Probably, and if it's not that planet, I think that there must be another planet besides Earth that supports life.
2007-04-28 11:14:50 · answer #9 · answered by Gabriela Z 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
i definitely think there could be, i read an article about all the things that had to be in place for us to be here and it sounded absolutely incredible, hundreds of different things had to happen in the same millisecond for our universe to form!!, why couldn't that happen on another planet???
2007-04-28 11:15:48 · answer #10 · answered by daniel m 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋