Lightest Exoplanet Found

Date- 21st April 09 Source- http://www.eso.org/gallery/v/Videos/esocast/

'Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor announced on 21 April 2009 the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, e, in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of more than four years of observations using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.'

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• esocast
• exoplanet
• Gliese
• 581e
• ESO

[geozaf]

i'm not being a downer, just think this. There are a slew of practical problems with this idea. How do you generate enough energy to reach such speeds? How does your ship avoid getting pulverized by tiny grains in space that would impact your ship with enormous energy? How do you accelerate so fast without squashing any human beings onboard the ship? But if you could somehow come up with solutions for each of these problems, it would work.

[05candyman]

@geozaf stop being such a downer believe in mankind

[xxxJparkxxx]

@geozaf Have you ever heard of time dilation? Einstein proved that when you travel closer to the speed of light, you begin to slow down relative to everything around you. So if you orbited the earth close to the speed of light for what seemed like to you only a day, might be 500 years on the earth. Which means if hypothetically we could travel at the speed of light (which is physically impossible) we would get to wherever we wanted in an instant (at least it seems like an instant to us)

[geozaf]

lets say it is confirmed a earth like planet, do you have a spacecraft that can travel at "SOL" (speed of light)? and if you got a spacecraft capable reaching the "SOL" how do you eat? for 20yrs?, imagine packing a food for 20yrs? for now i think no human gonna step on that planet, maybe in 500yrs or so i think... before mankind can do that.

[funkygreenmonkey1]

how very interesting in the research ive done i couldnt even imagine a planet so close to earth maybe in our time of need humans can live on that planet you never know

[mrcraig41]

Yep I agree! It is entirely possible for life to arise on countless other exoplanets. The whole subject of exoplanets is incredibly fascinating!

[mrcraig41]

Quite frankly I couldn't care less what you think.

Warm regards :)

[chopin65]

Wow! You must have given that a lot of thought. You got me! I could never show my face in public again. Youre clever! So original! I have never heard such a great analysis of an argument. Thanks for the great debate.

[mrcraig41]

Whatever you say, professor fuck-wit.

Pleasant regards

[chopin65]

How can your comment be marked as spam? People are so sensitive! How can anyone, possessing the intelligence to imagine life on another planet, also be so close minded about advocacy of environmental issues? When my comment was marked as negative I naturally assumed that I was being called for that reason. Wake up people!