Climate Simulation Reveals New Candidate That Could Support Earth-Like Life

mrk

mrk

mrk

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While waiting for tasks to run and things to process I do like to catch up on Cosmic news and this is pretty awesome news indeed!

Gliese 581d, about 20 light years away from us was once dismissed as not habitable but new accurate 3d simulations show it is in fact the best candidate and we just need more powerful telescopes to completely confirm it.

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.
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Full article.

It just emphasises how the article says towards the end that:
In the long run, the most important implication of these results may be the idea that life-supporting planets do not in fact need to be particularly like Earth at all.
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And people say humanity is doomed :p We're able to detect, analyse and simulate conditions on another planet in another solar system that would take 300,000 years to visit using today's spaceships!

The next half century is going to be pretty amazing in this field of science!
 
Superewza said:
It's only 20 light years isn't it? :p
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That makes it sound like 20 light years is nothing when 1 light year is about 6 trillion miles :p (Wiki).

Obviously space travel will improve by enormous levels over the years.
 
If Gliese 581d does turn out to be habitable, it would still be a pretty strange place to visit -- the denser air and thick clouds would keep the surface in a perpetual murky red twilight, and its large mass means that surface mavity would be around double that on Earth. But the diversity of planetary climates in the galaxy is likely to be far wider than the few examples we are used to from the Solar System. In the long run, the most important implication of these results may be the idea that life-supporting planets do not in fact need to be particularly like Earth at all.
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I find this interesting, murky red twilight ? 20 odd light years from Earth ? Twice Earth mavity ? This is sounding a lot like Vulcan to me from Star Trek :D
 
Combat squirrel said:
I find this interesting, murky red twilight? 20 odd light years from Earth? Twice Earth mavity? This is sounding a lot like Vulcan to me from Star Trek :D
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Damnit, don't raise our hopes! :D

Khaaan! said:
That makes it sound like 20 light years is nothing when 1 light year is about 6 trillion miles :p (Wiki).

Obviously space travel will improve by enormous levels over the years.
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Well in terms of stellar distances 20 light years is quite small, considering the closest star to us is what, 4.7 light years?
 
Khaaan! said:
And people say humanity is doomed :p We're able to detect, analyse and simulate conditions on another planet in another solar system that would take 300,000 years to visit using today's spaceships!
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Before you say "we're able to simulate . . ." - the first rule of interpreting simulation results is that you don't trust them (speaking as a computational engineer myself)! It would be a bit of a downer to travel that distance (assuming we could) and then find out that the simulations were completely wrong. Maybe they forgot to carry a ten somewhere, in true Simpsons style :p
 
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But if both 581g and 581d turned out to be habitable would that not massively increase the chances of huge numbers of Earth like planets and life in the universe?
 
Imagine you got halfway, and forgot the flathead screwdriver.

lol, no flatpack for you!
 
Once The scientists of Tommmmmorrowww
worldoftomorrow.jpg
have used more powerful telescopes and confirmed it, the simulations will be confirmed as correct/incorrect I guess so no need to forget the flathead just yet :p

But it's looking good!
 
Khaaan! said:
Once The scientists of Tommmmmorrowww have used more powerful telescopes and confirmed it, the simulations will be confirmed as correct/incorrect I guess so no need to forget the flathead just yet :p
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They might need a wee bit more than a powerful telescope and some luck. :p
 
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