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Today, it is finally Gliese 581g's big brother -- the larger and more distant Gliese 581d -- which has been shown to be the confirmed potentially habitable exoplanet by Robin Wordsworth, François Forget and co-workers from Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (CNRS, UPMC, ENS Paris, Ecole Polytechnique) at the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris. Although it is likely to be a rocky planet, it has a mass at least seven times that of Earth, and is estimated to be about twice its size. At first glance, Gliese 581d is a pretty poor candidate in the hunt for life: it receives less than a third of the stellar energy Earth does and may be tidally locked, with a permanent day and night side. After its discovery, it was generally believed that any atmosphere thick enough to keep the planet warm would become cold enough on the night side to freeze out entirely, ruining any prospects for a habitable climate.
To test whether this intuition was correct, Wordsworth and colleagues developed a new kind of computer model capable of accurately simulating possible exoplanet climates. The model simulates a planet's atmosphere and surface in three dimensions, rather like those used to study climate change on Earth. However, it is based on more fundamental physical principles, allowing the simulation of a much wider range of conditions than would otherwise be possible, including any atmospheric cocktail of gases, clouds and aerosols. To their surprise, they found that with a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere -- a likely scenario on such a large planet -- the climate of Gliese 581d is not only stable against collapse, but warm enough to have oceans, clouds and rainfall.
Scientists are particularly excited by the fact that at 20 light years from Earth, Gliese 581d is one of our closest galactic neighbours. For now, this is of limited use for budding interstellar colonists -- the furthest-travelled human-made spacecraft, Voyager 1, would still take over 300,000 years to arrive there.
Originally posted by DerbyCityLights
I would think that a rocky planet that had rainfall would not be rocky at all. There would be some kind of algea, fungus, moss, ect ect, in my humble opinion. I do like when hopeful news is released, but I also become leary when my internal logic screams to look further because something doesnt seem right.
Originally posted by DerbyCityLights
I would think that a rocky planet that had rainfall would not be rocky at all. There would be some kind of algea, fungus, moss, ect ect, in my humble opinion. I do like when hopeful news is released, but I also become leary when my internal logic screams to look further because something doesnt seem right.
Originally posted by MonteroReal
Originally posted by DerbyCityLights
I would think that a rocky planet that had rainfall would not be rocky at all. There would be some kind of algea, fungus, moss, ect ect, in my humble opinion. I do like when hopeful news is released, but I also become leary when my internal logic screams to look further because something doesnt seem right.
Sometimes people make me cry with their humble opinions :S
Originally posted by DerbyCityLights
reply to post by SaturnFX
Imagine what that could mean for the possibilities of advanced life. Either giant organisms with massive exoskeletons or huge internal bone structures. Or short, squat life forms with massive trunk like legs. Just the speculation alone of what type of life may be there is half the fun of discoveries like this