Could we all move to this planet?

Question

I've just been looking up some stuff about space, coz i did a project about it b4 we broke up, but i was just reading that 20 light years away they have found a planet Gliese 581c, that it like earth in most ways, it has water, an atmosphere that we can live on and it has the same temputure as us, i've just found this like amazing, at this moment they don't no if there is anything living on the planet coz they abviously can't get close anouth to see, but don't you think this is like awesome, i mean now we no for sure that there is planets like us, there is hunderds of planets like us scartterd all over the univiverse, so which means THERE IS life on other planets, do you think if there is like on this planet that they discoverd last year, they have spotted us and can see our planet if so , they might be thinking they same as us.

The planet is orbiting a star (sun) called gliese 581, in there solar system there is 3 plantes!

I HATE science but i've found this intersesting

Answer 1

Gliese 581c is in the right orbit to have a surface temperature consistent with liquid water. But water has not been detected.

Interstellar travel is difficult.  20 light years is a long distance.  A Project Orion style space craft traveling at 10% of the speed of light will require 200 years or so to get there.  And, last I heard, the occupants will get a 700 rad dose of radiation for each nuclear bomb blast used for propulsion.  Add cosmic rays and a nasty bits of radiation, and it's a long trip.  Assuming these problems are solved, it should be noted that the Biosphere II experiment - a sealed environment where the inhabitants were supposed to live off of the plants they grew - was a failure.  Extra oxygen had to be imported, and other problems came up.

Could it be done?  Perhaps.  I'd like to see shorter trips demonstrated first.  For example, getting people to Mars and back.  I'd also like to have more information on the Gliese 581 system, and other nearby systems as well. Big space telescopes could give that to us in a decade or so.

This is exactly the kind of story that makes science interesting. What's not to like?

Answer 2

if it is just like our planet couldn't we just look around here?  i don't think the human body is capable of surviving such speeds or distances(time).  i quit school and now i am closer to retirement than to school age, and there is so much i don't know. also without a good education the pay scale is usually low and that might mean old cars, old homes,old clothes and the bad part is when the old stuff is unsafe. hope you get some good teachers, they make a big difference.

Answer 3

No will not live on any other planets. also please take what you hear from Nasa with a grain of salt.

Answer 4

You missed something in your project dear.

Those planets are so large and have such strong

gravity, that we would be mashed flat if we tried to

stand on their surfaces.

Answer 5

Then are thousands of planets like that.

Answer 6

20 light years is a long LONG way.

Even if we could travel at the speed of light (which we can't now and won't ever be able to) it would take 20 years to get there.

And there is no evidence that we could even survive there - it is NOT like Earth, it is simply the most Earth-like planet found so far.  It could be at temperatures allowing liquid water on its surface, but there is no way to know if there is oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or any of the other dozens of elements life from Earth needs to survive.

It could be nothing but water, a ocean world, with no dry land.  The water could be like our oceans (saltwater) or could be something more unpleasant (like a sulphuric acid solution or something).

Or there could be no water at all (the scientists state that liquid water COULD exist, not that it does exist).  So it could be a dried-up rock with no water.

As of June this year, scientists have found almost 300 planets around other stars, and of all of them they have found only a very few that MIGHT be Earth-like in mass and orbit - but no concrete proof of any of them being habitable by Earth life.

There could be life of some kind on every one of those planets, but again there is no proof.

Answer 7

Actually Gliese 581c is way to warm to harbor life (as we know it), it's said that it gives off 5 times the amount of heat the Earth does leading to a mass effect of global warming.

However, Gliese 581 d (the third planet in the system) is said to be a much better candidate for life. It, like gliese 581 c, experiences global warming. But, due to a farther distance out from it's star, it would be able to stabilize the temperature and sustain a reasonable environment.

I'm glad you found something through science that interests you.

Look up, find out what those bright stars are called.

Answer 8

First of all, don't take anything that moron Dr.MoonFaker says. i am a university taught astronomer. i didn't teach myself from "astronomy for dummies".

anyway, about your question. we actually haven't confirmed anything about that planet yet. we know it has a liquid of some sort, and it could be water. its not cold enough for it to be any other liquid gas... as far as we know. we haven't been there yet, so its a stretch to say we could actually live there. and keep in mind, this exoplanet is 20 lightyears away. if it exploded yesterday, we wouldn't know for another 20 years. its condition could've changed by now. when we looked at it, we looked at what it looked like 20 years ago, because thats how long it takes for that light to get here.

besides that, we can't tell for certain how thick the atmosphere is. the telescopes on earth are semipowerful, but no telescope is powerful enough to tell us exactly what is on this exo planet that is 20 light years away.

unfortunately, often times, when astronomers release a finding... such as this, and yahoo news, or google picks it up, they turn every single comment tha astronomers make into a fact. sometimes the astronomers say something as a theory, or a casual joke, but to make the article more interesting, the reporters twist it around. i mean what sounds more interesting- "indications show that this planet may have the slim chance of contained small deposits of water capable of sustaining very simple organic organisms, though it is not proven, and highly unlikely." -or- "these planets have liquid water on them, which allow the planet to sustain life."

obviously, the person is going to pay attention to the second one. its less scientific, and more "cool" if you will. so we can't take everything yahoo, or even space.com seriously. you have to get it directly from the source, which is often times the astronomers that found the planet. there is probably a transcript of their interview floating through cyberspace.

so these planets are extreamily theoretical. we don't know if they have any oxygen in their atmosphere, or on the planet. we can hypothesize and say "well, maybe based on this and that" but we can't be 100% certain until we get there.

we are, however, pretty sure there are forms of life on other planets. it makes sense mathematically, as well as scientifically. here's the math part.

in theory, based on the number of galaxies found in the visible universe, including our own, there are approximately 750,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems. and keep in mind this figure only includes the galaxies we can see from earth, which is probably nothing compared to the galaxies that exist in the entire universe. so do you really think that life is limited to one solar system? i don't think so.

here's another reason there is probably life on other planets. a while back, we left some bacteria on the moon. the moon is extreamily cold, with no air, muchless oxygen. when we collected the bacteria later, we found that although only about 25% of the population was left, some had survived over the couse of three months. now these bacteria only live for a couple of days, so they obviously reproduced. which is really an amazing thing. we now know that life can exist on places with very cold temperatures, and also no oxygen. to me, this says that bacterial life can be spread all across the vase universe.

like i say to my students, keep researching, keep learning, and one day you'll discover a star or a planet, and when you write your book, you can put me down as the person that inspired you. :) of course, all my students hate me because i give pop quizes, but thats besides the point.

Answer 9

Why would we move there? so we can destroy it the same way we are destroying this one?

Answer 10

I would sign up for the trip if we can build a space ship that can travel fast enough to get us there before we become space dust. Just imagine the possibilities, a whole new world to colonize, pillage, destroy. Maybe we can discover oil, build cars, make lots of CO2 and burn it up in about 300 years. Then move on to another planet and repeat the process all over again. How exciting, huh?

Answer 11

Hi Flora -

I find it extremely encouraging that you find this interesting even if you "hate science" (somehow I don't quite believe that). Remember that if they could receive signals from us or even see us, they would be seeing stuff that left here twenty years ago and is just now getting there while traveling at the speed of light. If they signaled us back today, we wouldn't see that signal for another twenty years. If we wanted to travel there, it would take us thousands of years using today's technology. The distances are really formidable.

But there could indeed be life out there. I sort of doubt if it's intelligent life - we would have probably seen some indications of that - but you're right - it's very interesting. Keep asking and listening! You don't hate science, you just hate taking tests about it!

Answer 12

The idea of moving whole populations to some other planet is not, and never will be, a viable solution for any difficulties we have on Earth.  We will either survive together or perish together and that will be right here.

Some handful of individuals might set out for space one day, and that might mean the continuation of our species somewhere else.  But for the billions of our descendants left, that will be little consolation if we, and they, are not good custodians of this planet.

Answer 13

I read the wikipedia article (I know wikipedia isn't reliable but it is more so than 90% of the internet) and it says do to the likely amounts of greenhouse gasses in Gliese 581 c (also known as Ymir) it would be too hot for water to exist in liquid form, much like Venus. However its neighbor Gliese 581 d might be able to hold liquid water. This planet was thought to be outside the habitable zone but when applying the same amounts of greenhouse gas amounts that make its sister planets uninhabitable Gliese 581 d becomes a probable bastion of life.

However current solar knowledge cannot come up with a probable model for the formation of the Gliese 581 system so we are most likely missing some very important information that could throw all these predictions out the window.

This question surprised me. I had not heard of this planet and did not know they could discover Earth sized planets through the study of star perturbation. The fact that it these planets are in the habitable zone is equally exciting. Fingers crossed that Gliesians are looking up at us too =)

As for colonization of other planets, it will most likely never happen in mass. Using rockets to get people in space costs as much as the peoples' weight in gold... and I think we have more people than gold. But if we did send people to Gliese 581 we wouldn't need to go faster than light, which shouldn't be possible. By getting near to the speed of light time would slow down for the passengers so if they were going 50% the speed of light it would take 40 years to get there but it would only seem like 20 to them. If they went 90% it would take over 22 years to get there but it would only seem like a little over 2 for the passengers. I know you don't like science but special relativity is cool to everyone.   =)