US Astronomers Discover Potentially Habitable Planet; Earth’s Inhabitants Trade In ‘The Old Model’

Don’t ignite that tire fire in your backyard just yet folks. Astronomers have discovered a planet that straddles the ‘habitable zone’ in a solar system adjacent to ours. It is Earth-sized (check), the perfect distance from its Sun (check), and its mass suggests it should be able to hold onto an atmosphere and support liquid water (double-check). Alright all you environmentalists out there: time to get a real job.

The planet, which astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington discovered, is named Gliese 581g (the ‘g’ stands for Great!), has a mass 3 to 4 times the size of Earth (more parking) and has an orbital period of just under 37 days (just like your last girlfriend).

In all seriousness, this is humanity’s first best chance at wrecking another one.

The planet, which does not turn on an axis around its nearest red dwarf star, Gliese 581, is either in total sunlight or in complete darkness, depending which side you’re on. The most hospitable zone for life on the planet would be along the ‘terminator’, the thin band between the darkness and light.

“Any emerging life forms on the new planet would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude,” said Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the leaders of the team that discovered the planet.

The relatively short observation time (11 years!) and short distance from our planet leads his team to believe that there may be many more planets just like this one. That ‘short’ distance is approximately 20 light years from Earth. To give you a comparison, our Sun is about 8 and a half light minutes from Earth.

Just make sure you remember to tell your great-grandkids to pack light.

[Yahoo]