'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/apr/25/starsgalaxiesandplanets.spaceexploration

by pg • 19 years ago

54 78 19 years ago

guardian.co.uk

jkush4• 19 years ago

> "We wouldn't be surprised if there is life on this planet," said Stephane Udry, an astronomer on the project at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

I sincerely hope we find definite proof within my lifetime.

rms4• 19 years ago

The possibility excites me. I wonder what the sociological consequences will be if we can conclude that we are not alone in the galaxy.

jkush4• 19 years ago

Precisely why I hope it happens in my lifetime. I want to be part of something truly historic. Besides, I have to know!

geebee2• 19 years ago

Isn't it odd how important this is to people? I don't mean this in a bad way - it's important to me as well, far out of proportion to how it would impact my life. I would be extremely pleased if we found overwhelming evidence of life on another planet, even if it's just single cell life 20 light years away.

bluishgreen2• 19 years ago

Interesting...This possibility fills me with profound dread. People meeting other unknown alien people has happened in this planet in the near history _so_ many times. And not in a single one of those meetings was there anything to feel mushy about. It was blood all the way. Pizarro and Atahualpa didn't sit together and play chess over a hot cup of coffee and exchange notes on their childhood crushes.

tokipin• 19 years ago

hopefully religious folks would loosen up a bit

mdemare• 19 years ago

Unless there's intelligent life, that seems out of the question (assuming no breakthroughs in lifespan extensions). 20 light years is a long way from home.

If you took a picture of the night sky with a 1 zettapixel camera (mega giga tera peta exa zetta) this planet would be about 1 pixel.

pg2• 19 years ago

Maybe he's hoping his life will be long.

tipjoy• 19 years ago

Guess I'll have to wait a long time to hear back from that YC-clone I applied to out there.

brlewis• 19 years ago

Whew. I guess the Wumps are safe for now.

ptn4• 19 years ago

I almost wet myself when I read that.

P.S This guy must have seen some really amazing stuff not to be amazed by aliens.

DanielBMarkham6• 19 years ago

Very cool!

I thought the technology wasn't ready for all of the claims the article makes. An atmosphere? Rocky world? If they're able to do this now, imagine what it'll be like with the James Webb scope NASA is putting up in a few years.

And if we ever do discover intelligent ET in our lifetime, perhaps a good way to get to know each civilization is to hook up our internets. Or then again, maybe that's an awful idea.

icey3• 19 years ago

Does anyone know if quantum entanglement has been proven enough to allow for at least a glimpse of being able to make data transmission occur at "faster than the speed of light"?

I mean, if a quantum object represents a bit, and gets flipped here; and its counterpart is on... Mars; the counterpart should get flipped instantly, no?

jkush4• 19 years ago

Theoretically it will work, but the problem is getting the counterpart there. If you want instantaneous communication to something 20 light years away, you've got to travel 20 light years to get it there first.

inklesspen• 19 years ago

IIRC, entanglement does not allow for communication of data.

Retric• 19 years ago

There is no flipping of data it's more like you hand 2 people (Bob and Ted) a box with the same number in it. They walk to other sides of the world and then Ted opens his box. As soon as Ted opens their box they know what is in the other box but that has nothing to do with the speed of light and there is no way for Ted to use what he knows about the number in Bob's box to send Bob new information.

npk5• 19 years ago

Hey, the technology doesn't exist yet. The atmosphere, rocky, etc.. are all speculations based on theoretical modeling. If you're curious, go to http://www.oklo.org/ and download Systemic. This allows you to fit models to data, to see how the planet-hunting game is played.

The planet was found by repeatedly observing the same star over and over, and measuring how fast the star is moving away or towards us. This wiggle is produced by the motion of planets. It's really small. Currently the best team (full disclosure: one of my advisors is on it) can measure velocities of 30 centimeter per second. Pause and reflect. It's an amazingly difficult and important detection.

DanielBMarkham6• 19 years ago

That's what I thought.

Although the discovery is amazing, there's a bit of over-selling in the article. It's a detection based on a wiggle that means the model says there's a world where the model says it would be mostly rocky where the model says....

I guess I can stop painting those "Welcome E.T." signs now.

bharath• 19 years ago

A relevant quote that stuck to my mind from the movie "contact":

"Young Ellie: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?

Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space."

BrandonM• 19 years ago

Heh... I wonder how many people don't even know that Contact was originally a book by Carl Sagan. Although the movie was more true to the book than most, the book was much better than the movie, as is usually the case.

akkartik3• 19 years ago

The last 2 pages is the best part, and there's no way it could get into a movie.

erdos2• 19 years ago

Sagan intended this as an allusion to Thomas Carlyle. 'A sad spectacle!' exclaimed Thomas Carlyle, contemplating the possibility that millions of planets circle other suns. 'If they be inhabited, what a scope for pain and folly; and if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!' Contact is not the only place this allusion occurs in Sagan, who previously quoted Carlyle during a conference on extraterrestrials; Google makes a video of the conference available online.

ivankirigin• 19 years ago

If we're accepted to their YC clone, that would be a sign of intelligent life.

german3• 19 years ago

It would be awesome to discover intelligent life, I think that realizing that we are not alone in the universe will make us all think about being part of the world and not just being some country's citizens.

euccastro3• 19 years ago

If it takes that to get us to that mindset, then we'll be in real trouble when we need to all think about being part of the universe and not just some planet's citizens.

german3• 19 years ago

Maybe when we discover intelligent life in another universe. :P

euccastro3• 19 years ago

There is no way that planet can ever support any kind of civilization. With a 13 day year, in less than 300 days they can drink legally!

Or maybe I'm confused about where to draw the line with chauvinism. (shrug)

iamwil• 19 years ago

That's an interesting point. Then depending on the tilt of their planet, seasons go full cycle in about two weeks. I wonder what implications that has for the equivalent of photosynthetic life there. Are they "awake" and soaking up the sun for about a week before "sleeping" the second? Or do they just kinda ride it out?

That would also influence the "animals" (i.e. non-photosynthetic life) there and its behaviors.

That's all assuming they get energy from the sun. Maybe they can produce energy in other ways.

sspencer• 19 years ago

Vernor Vinge had an excellent novel named "A Deepness in the Sky" that dealt with the development of intelligent life on a planet whose star would extinguish and re-ignite itself predictably. Something like 3 decades of ignition and then 7 or 8 decades of darkness. The dominant life form was a spider-like being that could hibernate and ride out the darkness by creating a "deepness" (essentially a den).

Great book, with interesting insights about unusual planetary configurations with life. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes hard science fiction.

Agathos2• 19 years ago

The answers can be inferred on Earth. Most photosynthetic organisms on Earth are not deciduous trees and don't have seasonal cycles. All of them do maintain circadian cycles to cope with the much faster and more dramatic day/night cycle.

Or most? I know the cyanobacteria do and I'm pretty sure the purple bacteria do. The bacteriorhodopsin-users might not. If you call that photosynthesis.

a13x• 19 years ago

Why do people (sci-fi writers and scientists alike) generally seem to assume that extra-terrestrial life would be Earth-like life in Earth-like conditions?

henning• 19 years ago

Clearly God is testing our faith with such tantalizing discoveries.

What will those Satan-worshipping scientists think up next?

npk5• 19 years ago

You know, it's funny, I work with one of the competing teams (the best one.) Every time I hear about planet-hunting in the news, I think to my self, "screw startups." :)

ptn4• 19 years ago

I really don't want to crash this party, but has anyone taken a look at the date of the new? It isn't exactly..."new".

DaniFong2• 19 years ago

That's crazy. I used to think if anything like this happened, I'd be one of the first to be aware. I guess not. O.o

npk5• 19 years ago

Well,

To be fair, there's a huge PR machine behind these kinds of discoveries. In other words, there's fuzz associated with a planet being an "earth analog." There will be more and more "earth like" planets discovered in the future.

I mean, we've only discovered 212 extra-solar planets so there's plenty more to find :)

pg2• 19 years ago

Oops, sure enough. I think I saw it on popurls. I've seen this happen before, where an old story makes the rounds of the news aggregators, probably getting more traffic than it did when it was first published. Dominews.

rms4• 19 years ago

Oh... I didn't look at this date and figured this was a "new" might-be-habitable planet. I thought it was a good sign we were finding more than one... but having found just one is still pretty good.

DaniFong2• 19 years ago

I was gasping. I'm in shock. I used to dream about something like this. =)

npk5• 19 years ago

BTW, if you have $1M to donate (or some fraction greater than 10%) I can put you in contact with the right people.

Seriously, depending on how much you give, your name might go on one of the most important telescopes in the world.... maybe you could even name the first true earth analog :)

Pretty good deal.

rokhayakebe• 19 years ago

I know I am moving. I am almost sure that there is less evil, hatred, jealousy, envy and competition anywhere outside this world.

'Second Earth' found, 20 light years away

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