In interstellar news...

[soul]

Gliese 581, planet recently discovered in the Libra system seems to about the right distance from its sun to have liquid water, which is essential to life as we know it.

Apparently this is the most likely planet of the ones they've discovered to have a chance at supporting life... and its "only" 20.5 light years away.

Not sure why it's called a "super-earth", though, unless it's just because the planet is bigger.

[sunrise089]

Ehh...it's cool and all, but did anyone notice what qualities it has to "possibly support life?" Basically they just verified it wouldn't automatically NOT support life. In other words, it wasn't a gas giant or much to close or far away from it's star to have water. That's fine, but as we all know, disproving a negitive doesn't prove a positive.

[theGrimm]

Why limit it to "life as WE know it?"

Maybe astrophysicists have such a hard time getting a date, that they're hoping for a whole new planetful of chicks. And only 20 light years away? That's, like, next door!

[soul]

... That's fine, but as we all know, disproving a negitive doesn't prove a positive.

Agreed, but as far as planets found it's the 'most likely' to be able to, by far by the sounds of it (first one to actually be able to have liquid water, by how I understood it), and that itself is pretty cool.

And they probably limit things to life as we know it because we'd have a hard time identifying a type of life we're unfamiliar with. =P

[dathon]

The possibility is indeed cool.

But keep in mind that they haven't even confirmed that the planet exists. What they have is measurements to distortion of the planet's light (velocity), that is theorized to come from a planet. We don't have telescopes powerful enough to see things that small at that distance yet. However, I feel that way about much of astrophysics. Most of it is hypothesis, as so much of what they are studying is (supposedly) so far away. All they have to go on are minute fluctuations of EM radiation, and from this all kinds of wild theories about black holes, stars, planets, etc is formed. I'm not saying that astrophysicists are not doing important work, nor is it voodoo. I just feel like we the public (and often the scientists too!) accept as fact things which are mere speculations.

dathon

[Hureg]

little late and all but...

I wanna go there!

It's a bit of a shame that Bush can't get re-elected, I would have looked forward to reading his 1000 year plan of "Why not to worry about Global Warming".