Odds of Life on Newfound Earth-Size Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says

[AlphaGeek]

I gotta admit, the title seems pretty optimistic, but they've finally found the first Goldilocks planet, meaning one that's just right.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth-like-exoplanet-possibly-habitable-100929.html

 

[malasuerte]

Great, lets hope they don't send the robots there first, we already know that is a mistake

 

[Ze-Tomb Raider]

Statistically there should be billions of habitable planets.
We've just found a possible first of the series.

It all sounds promising.
And yes, no robots please.

It found a dying red sun and two colossal planets orbiting it that were eventually named Akbal and Cimi.

History of Planet Calypso, Virtuana Unleashed

Never know when you'll find one of these things nearby.

 

[Golden Atrox]

Robots could better withstand the journey due to the following reasons:
1. Organic materials decay too easily
2. Humans might become insane due to the immense pressure and isolation of such a journey
3. It would take too many generations of humans to reach the place (they might divert/retreat from original path)
4. It is unethical to have children onboard due to the risk involved
5. The effects of hibernation (in sci-fi) might have undesirable consequences on memory and brain function

Thanks for sharing the article

 

[Immortal]

"finally" isn't really the term for it

It was an overwhelming statistic probability, however the difficulty is actually in finding and confirming these planets. It's not like you can just say "zoom in on that star, and let's have a look", because the planets you need to look for are so tiny compared to the actual star. You need to observe shifts in it's gravity by looking at the way the stars lightspectrum changes. This means you need to observe a star for years upon years - and this is just for one star, and there are hundreds of millions : (

I think it is quite fortunate though that a system has been found in our local group that is that stable, it will be interesting to investigate this more.

 

[jjmatrix]

It was bound to happen; now all that remains is to figure out how to get there.
The planet is about 190 000 000 000 000 kilometres away; with today's technology it will take about 620000 years.
Yeah, it's a "little" far but maybe one of these days...