It'll be interesting to see what some remote spectrography reveals about this one, and it's only 20 light years away. :) SPACE.com -- Odds of Life on Newfound Earth-Size Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says Yeah, I know that's a long way by todays standards, but a person can dream. :)
Gliese 581g - Average Surface Temp -24C, or between 10 and -12F. Rotational Pattern: Tidally locked, 1 side is always sunny, the other side is always dark. Diameter: 1.4 earths. Sounds like a violent, cold world by anyones standards. Hot air from the sunny side constantly rising at quick accelleration, making room for cold air from the dark side to rush in make it sound like lots of rain along the twilight belt with a high incidence of storms as you get closer and closer to the midday point. The side that is constantly in darkness though would siphon moisture out of the air, locking it in extraordinarily large glaciers. So the storms on the light side would be mostly dry, with an increasing chance of rain as you got closer and closer to the cooler twilight area just before the freeze. Couple that with the increased mass driving plate tectonics at a faster rate, and youve got a world that probably is not very friendly to life as we know it. As worlds grow larger their interiors get hotter and crust gets thinner. Plate tectonics becomes faster, up to a point where mountains are theoretically absorbed before they can form. Not that the world couldnt be colonized, but this particular world might be lucky to have a single tree. A comparable earth environment to this place might be Tierra Del Fuego, at least on the light side. On the dark side its just black and cold. Imagine how the cat felt when your kids put it in the freezer (only for a few seconds, we promise we didnt hurt it!!!) and you might have a good idea of what the dark side is like. Cool discovery though. Id take a trip there if I could. Maybe even build a house, though I bet the ping times from there to Sweden arent that great! ----------- Revising my tidally locked , it seems that rotation is actually present, it however is likely to exactly match the length of the planets year, or 37 days. 37 days isnt that long (the star doesnt give off alot of heat, apparently) The environment seems to me like it will be stormy all over --- but not quite as arid as I thought earlier. Its amazing what kind of news you can find in Russian articles. They're much more informative than their English counterparts!!!
Can't really talk about tetonics until it's known that it has a molten core or not. The 10 degree mark means liquid water can exist, and tidally locked merely means that the terminator could be an interesting place for many reasons. The major reason I brought this post to the forum was that it was the first potentially habitable exoplanet. Others will no doubt follow. Besides, there are places on *this* planet that aren't very friendly to life as we thought we knew it just 20 years ago. Who'da thought chemosynthesis would be going on down by those black smokers?
A molten core seems to be a naturally occurring phenomena in rocky planets, as radioactive decay and pressure combine the heat generated causes the rock to melt in proportion to the mass of the world. Larger worlds, at this point, are expected to not only have molten cores, but have very thin crusts and very active plate tectonics. Thats not to say that life would not be present though, just that it would be much different. Intelligent life evolved on Earth the way it did thanks to the stability of our planet. Even being smacked by comets and rended by earthquakes, our particular rock gave us alot of time in between events to not only become acclimated, but develop ways to master our environment. Even Mars is being re-questioned in terms of geologic activity as we refine our understanding of how plate tectonics actually work and what the engine is that drives them. The once dead world now might not be so dead, but the thick crust and tall volcanoes at this point may be acting in concert to thin the Martian atmosphere. Lava flows in the tens of thousands of years old have perhaps been identified there. This would make sense if Mars were massive enough to generate heat, but not massive enough for that heat to melt the crust sufficiently to generate movement. Or so the current theory goes....
You might want to revise your revision on the "tidally locked" thing. Go look up the moon's orbital period, then it's rotational period, and think about it.
Yep I thought about it and did a physical demo. My original assumption was more correct. But hey, I think I should leave that up there, ya know. Give people something to get snarky about. :-)
Yup pretty exciting news, seems that it's relatively close to our location too. What was it again? The 117th star from the sun or something like that. Still a few lightyears away mind you.
About 20 LY. We'd be hard pressed getting there today to be certain, but it's close enough that the carrot on a stick will cause thought and planning. :)
Right, You keep dangeling that stick and I'll take the shiny metallic disc with artificial gravity. Back in a flash :D
