AP: First detection of extra-solar terrestial sized planet?

Billion? That many? Wow...

Man, with all the smart folks in the world you would think a new propulsion system to allow these distances to be traversed would have been invented! mabie im just a bit impatient!

maybe im just a bit impatient!

I think so! If you do the maths for a light year, in miles, knowing that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second:

186,000 X 60 (seconds) X 60 (minutes) X 24 (hours) X 365 (days) = the distance light covers, in a straight line, in one year...

...which is about 5,865,696,000,000 miles!

(is that 5 billion miles, or 5 trillion miles? You know, the billion = one thousand million or 1 million million... )

Seanie.

From the SETI Institute (Edna DeVore; Deputy Chief Executive Officer)…

“There’s considerable interest in the question of whether M-Stars (“Gliese 581” is an “M” 2.5V red dwarf star that’s making the news – emphasis added Mike) could host habitable planets. Would the planets be tidally locked with one face always directed toward the M-Star? Would flares wipe out life on the local planet? If M-Stars could host habitable planets, life may be much more widespread that we’ve previously thought. Thus, M-Stars are of interest to astrobiologists including SETI scientists who are searching for life beyond Earth.
Why are SETI scientists interested in M-Stars? As Dr. Peter Backus, Observing Programs Manager for SETI, concluded in a preliminary report on the M-Stars workshop, “One…aspect of M dwarfs makes them intriguing for SETI: they may be ideal hosts for advanced technological civilizations because they live an extraordinarily long time. Stars like the Sun live (i.e., they fuse hydrogen into helium) for only about 10 billion years. No M dwarf that ever formed has yet to die; no M dwarf will die for more than another 100 billion years. With such long lifetimes, there are big possibilities for these small stars.”
www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c...94993&ct=3760145

From: ASTROBIOLOGY, Volume 7, Number 1, 2007

“M Star Planet Habitability” HELMUT LAMMER
www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ast.2006.0123

“A Reappraisal of the Habitability of Planets Around
M Dwarf Stars” TARTER, et al“In light of the claimed detection of the planets with masses as small as 5.5 and 7.5 M Earth orbiting M stars, there seems no reason to exclude the possibility of terrestrial planets. Tidally locked synchronous rotation within the narrow habitable zone does not necessarily lead to atmospheric collapse, and active stellar flaring may not be as much of an evolutionarily disadvantageous factor as has previously been supposed. We conclude that M dwarf stars may indeed be viable hosts for planets on which the origin and evolution of life can occur”.
www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/ast.2006.0124

I am looking forward to NASAs “Kepler Mission”; and ESAs “COROT”, things could get more interesting over the next few years in this area of research.
COROT: www.esa.int/esaSC/120372_index_0_m.html
Kepler: kepler.nasa.gov/

Clear skies
Mike

The British gave up calling a million million a "billion" about 15 years ago.

In Britain a billion is now officially "one thousand million."

"American cultural imperialism" the French would call it!

Peter.

P.S. I've read in several places that the Voyagers will reach the distance to the Alpha Centauri system (If they were going there) in about 80,000 years.

That would mean that they would get to 20 LY in less than 400,000 years.

Peter.