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A new planet has been discovered, and it has already been determined to bear temperatures between 32° and 104°F, which give it the possibility of having water in liquid form--meaning the potential for life as we know it to exist on that planet. Too bad it's at a currently unreachable distance of 20 light-years away.

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excellent find, Gidley! yeah the distance right now is rather insurmountable, and we wont live to see people explore it with manned or unmanned probes, but it's still incredibly exciting news. i wouldn't be surprised if technology was sufficient within the century to travel something like a few light years away, but that's only if people commit more to research and good astronomy.

still, how exciting! even if it's uninhabited or uninhabitable or not at all what it seems, it's still a very exciting find for the astronomical community.

That's pretty cool. We probably won't know enough about it, even in our lifetime, to know of any lifeforms that could be on it, if any, which is a pity, but it's good to know that we're closer to finding extraterrestrial life.

I also find it cool that all of the observations being made about the planet today are actually from 20 years ago (I believe). It's like looking into the past (It pretty much is(

I heard about this on the news. Interesting, but just because it's at the right temperature to have liquid water doesn't /mean/ there's going to be liquid water, and even if there's liquid water that doesn't mean OMG ALIENS. There might be some simple animals living in the water- I mean, if it actually exists. I doubt there'll be any many-celled animals.

But that's just my inner cynic talking. Awesome anyway.



Eh, not likely. Even if you're traveling at the speed of light [which is pretty much impossible] it would take years to reach, well, pretty much anything.

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Ten bucks says they name it after Yuggoth or Yadith.

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Extrasolar planets almost never have names of any of the sorts you'd want to call them by. Neither do many stars. They're all boring numbers like something a compulsive leetspeeker would mumble while drunk.

Still, really cool. If they do have life, we're looking into their 1980's right now... I wonder if we'll find a race of since-shaven mullet people.

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I firmly believe that this may be one of the first planets for humans to settle on (and later terraform) if we ever reach that level (and if things continue like they are now, we will mostly likely reach that level for sure within the next millennia).

Quite right--as of now, it's simply using the default title of Gliese 581c...until they can think of something better.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Free Planet USA?

I think traveling faster than the speed of light will happen within the next 500 years and then building a spacecraft that can travel that fast will come shortly after. Very recently we pushed both sound and light past the speed of light.

LINK PLZ!

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LOL PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

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Looks like a job for...

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Light:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 225731.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2000/07/ ... 00720.html

Sound:

http://www.primidi.com/2007/01/20.html
http://www.physorg.com/news88249076.html

I'm a pretty crappy reader when I'm reading stuff that's not in a book, so I could've misread the articles.

Whoa, it's pretty awesome that we fund a planet that similar to ours. Unfortunately, like PMG said, we'll probably never reach it.

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You'd think so, but scientists have made particles go faster than the speed of light. It is believed that light does not experience time, so going faster than it would cause one to go back in time.

EDIT: Yeah, kinda like what Mike said.

*was not being serious*

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I read about this this morning and it was exciting. I hope there is life on that planet, that'd be awesome. Unless it's the cliched alien invader kind of life.

But let's look for life on Europa first. It's closer.

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"Explain to me how drowning them would not ruin their date."

i think that making a wee little particle in an accelerator go faster (or at) the speed of light is one thing, but making a spaceship go zoooom like that is really really difficult and is mostly forbidden by physics.

the thing with small particles, quantum mechanics and such, is that they behave WAY differently then large bits of matter. i was never proposing to travel faster than the speed of light, i find that really doubtful.

If I understand the articles correctly, part of the process involved is manipulating the medium through which the light/sound/particles are projected. Only by controlling the medium itself is the faster-than-light acceleration possible. This makes the results of these experiments pretty much useless for development of near-light or faster-than-light space travel.

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So I guess we're done with talking about Europa, then?

Of Course Not! Europa has those nice purple lobsters that are excellent for grilling.

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if a spaceship is zooming at the speed of light and someone walks from one end to the other, are they travelling faster than light?

I'm sure if they give the spaceship a good push it'll make it...
I'll never forgive scientists for destroying Pluto...

This is awesome. I mean, there might not be life, but what if there IS? Our nearby cousins Mars and Europa are likely canidates to bear some molecular life or hairy lobster crabs, even if they're prehistoric, but this could be a planet that CAN have evolved lifeforms!

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