Newly discovered planet may be habitable

[Charles_Main]

I love when someone tries to pass out bullshit speculation as "scientific".

Answers.com - What is scientific speculation
Scientific speculation is a legitimate part of the scientific process that develops early ideas that are not yet robust enough to be a testable, falsifiable or worthy of being a more formal "hypothesis". Scientific speculations are grounded in established knowledge in a field, but generally go beyond what is defensible.

Not exactly "bullshit."

But we have a board populated by Conservatives with little imagination, negative scientific knowledge, and less curiousity.

LOL never pass up a chance to be a partisan hack eh.

 

[Ringel05]

A decadelong hunt by an astronomer at UC Santa Cruz has yielded the discovery of a planet that could be the most Earth-like planet ever discovered -- and the best case yet for a habitable one, ending our cosmic loneliness.

The planet, called Gliese 581g, is located in prime real estate within the constellation Libra, where it's sweater weather, not too windy, with scenic views of a white sky.

"It could be the Goldilocks planet, neither too hot nor too cold "... orbiting its star in a 'habitable zone,' " said Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz, who announced the news with Carnegie Institution colleague Paul Butler at a Wednesday news briefing at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Science Foundation, which funded the work.

"It may well be like Earth, where you could walk around comfortably and look out at the stars," said Vogt, 60, of Aptos.

Scientists say there is no evidence that Gliese 581g holds oxygenated landscapes of green and blue that would support microbes, dinosaurs or some alien-looking pre-human. For life, there must be water, and there's no proof of that. Yet.

But Earth is unlikely to be some stupendous fluke that happened just once, said Vogt.

"Places like Earth may not be very special," he said.

Newly discovered planet may be habitable - San Jose Mercury News

I love when someone tries to pass out bullshit speculation as "scientific".

Answers.com - What is scientific speculation
Scientific speculation is a legitimate part of the scientific process that develops early ideas that are not yet robust enough to be a testable, falsifiable or worthy of being a more formal "hypothesis". Scientific speculations are grounded in established knowledge in a field, but generally go beyond what is defensible.

Not exactly "bullshit."

Which translates to "we're scientists, the new Gods. You're not supposed to question us". Yes, I'm familiar with scientific speculation, while some is very legitimate much is nothing but pure flight of fancy, someone's pet inspection. Not that there is anything wrong with that as long as the facts, postulations and wishful thinking are kept properly separate. Imagination is the key to learning.

 

[American Horse]

I love when someone tries to pass out bullshit speculation as "scientific".

Answers.com - What is scientific speculation
Scientific speculation is a legitimate part of the scientific process that develops early ideas that are not yet robust enough to be a testable, falsifiable or worthy of being a more formal "hypothesis". Scientific speculations are grounded in established knowledge in a field, but generally go beyond what is defensible.

Not exactly "bullshit."

But we have a board populated by Conservatives with little imagination, negative scientific knowledge, and less curiousity.

As was to be expected with planets found orbiting a star of this type (an M Class red dwarf) within what astronomers would describe as a "habitable zone" is that the planet is tidally locked to the star. That is because to be in that habital zone it is orbiting very close to the parent star. This means that the planet does not rotate in respect to the star, thus the side facing the star would always be hot and the other side always cold.

In our own solar system, Mercury is similarly tidally locked, and it is 67-million miles from Sol, and this planet is only 14-million miles from its primary.

There is a possibility that there is a temperate zone, and that as we discovered with Uranus which is turned on its side in respect to the sun and for a part of each orbit is similarly oriented, that atmospheric currents become established which ameliorate some of this problem, but Uranus is a gas giant, so that there is an entirely different convection system in its atmosphere than would exist in an Earth type planet.

What it shows more than anything else, is that there are "Earth type planets" out there, but they have remained undiscovered, largely because the effects we can observe to detect them can more easily be detected from giant planets. A small sun like Gliese-581g is more easily perturbed, and the visual radiance less brilliant, so that it can be penetrated more easily by some of our visual methods.

A distance of 20 light years, is most interesting, because it is considered in our stellar neighborhood. But it is an insurmountable distance for direct travel. At a speed of 100,000 miles per hour it would take 19,552,320 years, and at 1,000,000 per hour it would still take 1,955,232, and that doesn't take into account any relative motions of our two systems.

 

[Meister]

Answers.com - What is scientific speculation
Scientific speculation is a legitimate part of the scientific process that develops early ideas that are not yet robust enough to be a testable, falsifiable or worthy of being a more formal "hypothesis". Scientific speculations are grounded in established knowledge in a field, but generally go beyond what is defensible.

Not exactly "bullshit."

But we have a board populated by Conservatives with little imagination, negative scientific knowledge, and less curiousity.

As was to be expected with planets found orbiting a star of this type (an M Class red dwarf) within what astronomers would describe as a "habitable zone" is that the planet is tidally locked to the star. That is because to be in that habital zone it is orbiting very close to the parent star. This means that the planet does not rotate in respect to the star, thus the side facing the star would always be hot and the other side always cold.

In our own solar system, Mercury is similarly tidally locked, and it is 67-million miles from Sol, and this planet is only 14-million miles from its primary.

There is a possibility that there is a temperate zone, and that as we discovered with Uranus which is turned on its side in respect to the sun and for a part of each orbit is similarly oriented, that atmospheric currents become established which ameliorate some of this problem, but Uranus is a gas giant, so that there is an entirely different convection system in its atmosphere than would exist in an Earth type planet.

What it shows more than anything else, is that there are "Earth type planets" out there, but they have remained undiscovered, largely because the effects we can observe to detect them can more easily be detected from giant planets. A small sun like Gliese-581g is more easily perturbed, and the visual radiance less brilliant, so that it can be penetrated more easily by some of our visual methods.

A distance of 20 light years, is most interesting, because it is considered in our stellar neighborhood. But it is an insurmountable distance for direct travel. At a speed of 100,000 per hour it would take 19,552,320 years, and at 1,000,000 per hour it would still take 1,955,232, and that doesn't take into account any relative motions of our two systems.

Thank you American Horse for putting it all into perspective with the reality of this find.

 

[uscitizen]

Originally posted by Dilloduck
I love when someone tries to pass out bullshit speculation as "scientific".

It's the good, old unholy alliance between the media craving for bombastic news and Carl Sagan-like scientists yearning for the limelight.

Kahotek (sp?) was a bust.

 

[Missourian]

Shame Obama gutted the Constellation space program.

Guess we'll be calling that planet "New China".

Huh? We should get to the new planet by way of the Moon? The Constellation program gutted further Moon exploration, period.

Requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal 2011, the administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA's budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability, including some $500 million in 2011.
Read more: Obama ends moon program, endorses private spaceflight | The Space Shot - CNET News

C'mon Maggie, this might be rocket science, but it ain't that hard.

If we can't even get to the Moon again, we sure as hell ain't going anywhere else.

Private spaceflight has just barely managed to reach a stable Earth orbit. Something NASA did half a century ago.

We are falling behind, and soon we will lose the scientists and engineers with the skillsets required to continue pursuing American space exploration.

Lucky for us we can watch the Chinese, Russians, and Japanese manned flights to the Moon, Mars and beyond in 3D.

 

[Meister]

We're going to be paying the Russians some bigtime money to get to the space station in the near future. I think this is Obama politics for global redistribution of wealth....going through the back door.
He's also doing this in the Gulf of mexico.

 

[Old Rocks]

Shame Obama gutted the Constellation space program.

Guess we'll be calling that planet "New China".

Huh? We should get to the new planet by way of the Moon? The Constellation program gutted further Moon exploration, period.

Requesting some $19 billion for NASA in fiscal 2011, the administration announced plans to pump an additional $6 billion into NASA's budget over the next five years to kick-start development of a new commercial manned spaceflight capability, including some $500 million in 2011.
Read more: Obama ends moon program, endorses private spaceflight | The Space Shot - CNET News

C'mon Maggie, this might be rocket science, but it ain't that hard.

If we can't even get to the Moon again, we sure as hell ain't going anywhere else.

Private spaceflight has just barely managed to reach a stable Earth orbit. Something NASA did half a century ago.

We are falling behind, and soon we will lose the scientists and engineers with the skillsets required to continue pursuing American space exploration.

Lucky for us we can watch the Chinese, Russians, and Japanese manned flights to the Moon, Mars and beyond in 3D.

Were our President to suggest that we immediatly put a trillion dollar 5 year program into effect to get our space exploration program back on track, the Republicans in the Congress and Senate would stand as a unit against it. They would scream "Deficit!".

I, personly, would like to see such a program. It would put people to work, and would jump start our technological progress, as the Apollo program did. But you could not get it past the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats.

We are already losing scientists and engineers as they move on to countries where the pay is better, and they are respected for their knowledge, rather than denigrated because they state facts that don't jibe with politically correct views of the world.

Might note, also, that the 3d sets we will watch the achievements of these nations on will be made in China or South Korea.

 

[Old Rocks]

We're going to be paying the Russians some bigtime money to get to the space station in the near future. I think this is Obama politics for global redistribution of wealth....going through the back door.
He's also doing this in the Gulf of mexico.

Crap. Bush and the Republicans had eight years to put a real space program into place. The money spent on a war based on lies would have gotten us back to the moon. And we would have had a positive return on that, rather than the totally negative return we have gotten from our adventures in Iraq.

 

[American Horse]

We're going to be paying the Russians some bigtime money to get to the space station in the near future. I think this is Obama politics for global redistribution of wealth....going through the back door.
He's also doing this in the Gulf of mexico.

At the rate things are going overall, we'll be paying the Chinese to haul our sorry butts into space.

 

[Meister]

We're going to be paying the Russians some bigtime money to get to the space station in the near future. I think this is Obama politics for global redistribution of wealth....going through the back door.
He's also doing this in the Gulf of mexico.

Crap. Bush and the Republicans had eight years to put a real space program into place. The money spent on a war based on lies would have gotten us back to the moon. And we would have had a positive return on that, rather than the totally negative return we have gotten from our adventures in Iraq.

Silly ass.......Yeah it's always Bush....you keep playing your broken record, roxie. Only fools like yourself believe that drivel.

 

[konradv]

Newly discovered planet may be habitablehttp://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16209633?source=most_viewed&nclick_check=1

I heard that Gliese 581g has a big problem with global warming.

LOL! Cow farts imperil Gliese 581g

Why, you going?

 

[konradv]

A decadelong hunt by an astronomer at UC Santa Cruz has yielded the discovery of a planet that could be the most Earth-like planet ever discovered -- and the best case yet for a habitable one, ending our cosmic loneliness.

The planet, called Gliese 581g, is located in prime real estate within the constellation Libra, where it's sweater weather, not too windy, with scenic views of a white sky.

"It could be the Goldilocks planet, neither too hot nor too cold "... orbiting its star in a 'habitable zone,' " said Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz, who announced the news with Carnegie Institution colleague Paul Butler at a Wednesday news briefing at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Science Foundation, which funded the work.

"It may well be like Earth, where you could walk around comfortably and look out at the stars," said Vogt, 60, of Aptos.

Scientists say there is no evidence that Gliese 581g holds oxygenated landscapes of green and blue that would support microbes, dinosaurs or some alien-looking pre-human. For life, there must be water, and there's no proof of that. Yet.

But Earth is unlikely to be some stupendous fluke that happened just once, said Vogt.

"Places like Earth may not be very special," he said.

Newly discovered planet may be habitable - San Jose Mercury News

I love when someone tries to pass out bullshit speculation as "scientific".

Well DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH, that's what scientists do before they have all the facts. It isn't a theory yet, so I guess you brainiacs figure that's even worse than a guess. You're taking political tacks here, just like in the AGW debate, despite the fact that the OP was non-political and merely an interesting story. I guess y'all are just trying to keep the whole "scientists don't know what they're doing" meme going, now that the "Climategate" hoax has fizzled out.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Clinton and the Democrats killed the SSC, remember?

 

[konradv]

Clinton and the Democrats killed the SSC, remember?

I remember he had a balanced budget until Dubya said, "let's start another war".

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Clinton and the Democrats killed the SSC, remember?

I remember he had a balanced budget until Dubya said, "let's start another war".

Clinton balanced the budget by killing the biggest "Big Science" project on planet Earth, and that makes you proud?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

 

[konradv]

Clinton and the Democrats killed the SSC, remember?

I remember he had a balanced budget until Dubya said, "let's start another war".

Clinton balanced the budget by killing the biggest "Big Science" project on planet Earth, and that makes you proud?

Large Hadron Collider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm proud he was on the way to saving the country until Bush/Cheney came along and told us "deficits didn't matter"!!! Now you're back to complaining that they do. Just think how much better off we'd be, if he'd not been allowed to steal the '00 election.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I remember he had a balanced budget until Dubya said, "let's start another war".

Clinton balanced the budget by killing the biggest "Big Science" project on planet Earth, and that makes you proud?

Large Hadron Collider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm proud he was on the way to saving the country until Bush/Cheney came along and told us "deficits didn't matter"!!! Now you're back to complaining that they do. Just think how much better off we'd be, if he'd not been allowed to steal the '00 election.

Clinton saved the Country by giving us the first Republican Congress in my lifetime.

 

[konradv]

Perhaps, but at least in '96 they weren't dumb enough to give them the keys to the WH, forcing the Reps to steal them in'00.

 

[MaggieMae]

Answers.com - What is scientific speculation
Scientific speculation is a legitimate part of the scientific process that develops early ideas that are not yet robust enough to be a testable, falsifiable or worthy of being a more formal "hypothesis". Scientific speculations are grounded in established knowledge in a field, but generally go beyond what is defensible.

Not exactly "bullshit."

But we have a board populated by Conservatives with little imagination, negative scientific knowledge, and less curiousity.

As was to be expected with planets found orbiting a star of this type (an M Class red dwarf) within what astronomers would describe as a "habitable zone" is that the planet is tidally locked to the star. That is because to be in that habital zone it is orbiting very close to the parent star. This means that the planet does not rotate in respect to the star, thus the side facing the star would always be hot and the other side always cold.

In our own solar system, Mercury is similarly tidally locked, and it is 67-million miles from Sol, and this planet is only 14-million miles from its primary.

There is a possibility that there is a temperate zone, and that as we discovered with Uranus which is turned on its side in respect to the sun and for a part of each orbit is similarly oriented, that atmospheric currents become established which ameliorate some of this problem, but Uranus is a gas giant, so that there is an entirely different convection system in its atmosphere than would exist in an Earth type planet.

What it shows more than anything else, is that there are "Earth type planets" out there, but they have remained undiscovered, largely because the effects we can observe to detect them can more easily be detected from giant planets. A small sun like Gliese-581g is more easily perturbed, and the visual radiance less brilliant, so that it can be penetrated more easily by some of our visual methods.

A distance of 20 light years, is most interesting, because it is considered in our stellar neighborhood. But it is an insurmountable distance for direct travel. At a speed of 100,000 miles per hour it would take 19,552,320 years, and at 1,000,000 per hour it would still take 1,955,232, and that doesn't take into account any relative motions of our two systems.

I didn't spot a bit of bullshit there. Thanks!