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| Gliese 581 System Photos by NASA |
Pack your bags, we're moving to a new planet.
Tired of the same humdrum views on the Earth? Want to get away from the crowds and pesky neighbors? Is outer space an exotic enough getaway spot for you?
Tired of the same humdrum views on the Earth? Want to get away from the crowds and pesky neighbors? Is outer space an exotic enough getaway spot for you?
Someday soon you might be able to have an adventure like the pioneers settling the Wild West. Only you would be taming the wilds of a whole new planet.
Ready to move to space and colonize a planet? Astronomers think they have found a planet that could support life. It is in the “just right” zone for sustaining liquid water. It is not so far from its sun that the water would be ice, but far enough away that the water isn’t evaporated.
And on the plus side the planet is only about 20 light years away, so it is practically on the same block as our solar system if you are judging distances on a cosmic scale.
The planet, called Gliese 581d, is one of six planets orbiting a red dwarf star. It is about seven times the mass of Earth, so there will be plenty of room for homesteads.
The good news is that at least one of its sister planets is another likely candidate for life. The bad news is that some scientists are skeptical about the planet even existing.
If the astronomers who discovered the system are right, the carbon dioxide based atmosphere of the planet would be able to sustain liquid water. The planet might also have a captured rotation in which half the planet always faces the sun and the other half always faces away.
This means that there would be an eternal daylight side and an eternal nighttime side. So if you are night person, you would have it made there.
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| Are we there yet? |
