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Vale Middle School –– Could ‘Goldilocks’ Planet Be Just Right For Life?

Notes on my thoughts,

Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the

reactions and questions as I

equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life

read:

on Earth. But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange

planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and

much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close

to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much,

so one side is almost always bright, the other dark. Temperatures can be as hot

as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the

land of constant sunrise — it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer

Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of

atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because

there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that

chances for life on this planet are 100 percent." The astronomers' findings are

being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National

Science Foundation on Wednesday.

The planet circles a star called Gliese 581. It's about 120 trillion miles away, so

it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a

long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in

our face, right next door to us," Vogt said in an interview. That close proximity

and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets

hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare. Vogt and

Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as

much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-

sized and in the habitable zone.

With an estimated 200 billion stars in the universe, that means maybe 40 billion

planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State

University's Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common

these planets are.

Vogt and Butler used ground-based telescopes to track the star's precise

movements over 11 years and watch for wobbles that indicate planets are

circling it. The newly discovered planet is actually the sixth found circling

Gliese 581. Two looked promising for habitability for a while, another turned

out to be too hot and the fifth is likely too cold. This sixth one bracketed right in

the sweet spot in between, Vogt said. With the star designated "a," its sixth

planet is called Gliese 581g. "It's not a very interesting name and it's a beautiful

planet," Vogt said. Unofficially, he's named it after his wife: "I call it Zarmina's

World."

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