Planet HD 85512 b Holds Possibility of Life

[wautd]

I suggest you follow the link for purdy pics and stuff

Sept. 12, 2011 -- Drawing comparisons between our planet and worlds orbiting other stars can be misleading -- or even controversial -- but more often than not, exoplanet-hunting scientists are simply trying to put these alien worlds into perspective.

SEE ALSO: Batch of Fifty New Alien Worlds Discovered

Whether NASA's Kepler space telescope has spotted an exoplanet's shadow, or ESO's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) has spotted the wobble of a star caused by the gravity of an orbiting world, very few details about these exoplanets present themselves.

Let's face it, a world called "HD 85512b," with a mass of 3.6 Earths, and an orbital period of 54 days hardly evokes thoughts of anything even vaguely familiar to our planet. But with these few characteristics, astronomers using HARPS have deduced that although it's more massive than Earth, HD 85512b has a few potentially Earth-like qualities.

Most critically, HD 85512b orbits its star just within its habitable zone. Although we have no clue whether this alien planet has any water on its surface, if it did, there's the possibility that it may exist in a liquid state. In fact, astronomers predict a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius (77 F) at the top of HD 85512b's atmosphere -- a temperature that isn't so alien to us Earthlings. However, the predicted temperature at the top of the atmosphere will likely be entirely different from the temperature on the surface.

Now that we know HD 85512b is out there, follow-up work is needed to further refine the exoplanet's orbit. Also, further work will be needed to understand what this world is made of. Is it a rocky, truly Earth-like world? Does it have an atmosphere? If it does, is the atmosphere thick like Earth's; as suffocating as Venus'; or, as tenuous as Mars'? Does the atmosphere contain organic compounds?

These questions (and many, many more) will be pursued by astronomers using the increasingly sophisticated suite of exoplanet-hunting instrumentation to derive whether HD 85512b is not only a "super-Earth," but whether it could be considered an Earth-like super-Earth.



Until then, we know that there is a preponderance of small worlds in our galaxy, it's only a matter of time before a true Earth-like exoplanet emerges from the dark.

Well, that's about damn time

[Crossroads Inc.]

I know this may be a stupid question, but how far from Earth are these?

[Rabid]

Roughly 36 lights-years aways from the Sun.

Source : Wikipedia

[Crossroads Inc.]

36 ly?
That is a walk in the park astronomically speaking!
Might be an actual world to shoot for in the next few hundred years.

[SpaceMarine93]

36 ly?
That is a walk in the park astronomically speaking!
Might be an actual world to shoot for in the next few hundred years.

Ahem, might I remind you that not only is it less than a 'walk in the park' in astronomical distance speaking (more like moving two centimeters to the right), but also even so, such distances are severely difficult for Humanity to travel through.

Optimally, we would had sufficient technology within the next century that would allow us to travel in space at 10% of the speed of light, travelling one way to Proxima Centauri would still take 4 decades. A trip to HD 85512b would take around 360 years, which by then all the original crew members would be dead. Even if we accelerate to near-light speed levels - which is impractical as it requires near-infinite amounts of energy - the crew would still have to live their entire lifetime on such a trip, and no one would invest so much time and effort to do something like this.

Then adding to the problem would be how to build a close lopped life-sustaining system that would keep a crew alive for decades, if not centuries, building an effective shielding (e.g. massive quantities of ice, an asteroid in front, etc) from cosmic radiation and relativistic space debris, finding a propellant that is safe and allows rapid space travel (anti-matter? Solar Sails? Would those even work?), preventing insanity from breaking out in the crew and finding the public will to fund such an en-devour.

So no, its not a walk in the park, it is significantly harder than climbing Mount Everest in casual clothes.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm not so optimistic about this one. A 25 C temperature at the top of its clouds could hide a much higher temperature below them. The planet might simply be a giant Venus equivalent.

Here's hoping that we find more planets in the middle of the habitable zone (like the disputed Gliese 581 g).