Goldilocks Planet Found

I think there should be a distinguishment here. Is this planet a "Goldilocks planet" or is it just in the Goldilocks zone?

Because if it's a latter there's no guarantee this planet will be anything like Earth, it could just be a dead planet. After all, the reason there is life on Earth is because the Earth is volcanically active.

O RLY?

? Yes really?

After all, the atmosphere was formed from volcanic activity. Without it, there wouldn't be an atmosphere, the planet would be like Mercury, just where the Earth is instead.

Or our own moon. However, it doesn't have a lot of gravity to retain an atmosphere, anyway.

What's Titan's excuse?

Giant catapult. Thats the answer! Made from real cats!

Well Titan is much more massive then the moon, it's also volcanically active.

Yes but does it need to remain active in order to sustain life.

wtf are you trying to imply? That's what I damn said.

You said it needed volcanic activity to kick start life. As the world is now, I do not see how life couldn't manage without volcanic activity.

...Really? You quoting me on that? Because I'm pretty sure I didn't say that.

After all, the reason there is life on Earth is because the Earth is volcanically active.

After all, the atmosphere was formed from volcanic activity. Without it, there wouldn't be an atmosphere, the planet would be like Mercury, just where the Earth is instead.

ಠ_ಠYou must be new here, otherwise you'd know to reread your own posts before replying so aggressively.ಠ_ಠ

You might want to go see an optometrist. You see that little itty bitty tiny word there?

"After all, the reason there is life on Earth is because the Earth is volcanically active."

That's an is not a was.

edited 9th Oct '10 5:30:34 PM by CommandoDude

What I don't get is why this has suddenly become big news. I remember holding discussions about Gliese 581 G on the Koala Wallop forums before I was even aware of tvtropes.

The wikipedia page says that it was announced in September of 2010, and I don't remember where I was first exposed to the news, but a quick search confirms that the references to it on the Koala Wallop forum go back to 2007.

This is very very very very very very old news. Like Desertopa I discussed it elsewhere before joining here. IIRC this is the planet that's made almost entirely of some kind of liquid (not water, as I recall).

So how come it got popular all of a sudden? New data shifted expectations?

^^^ And your point being...

edited 9th Oct '10 6:44:07 PM by RawPower

There's probably some new data, but everything in the recent report seems to be stuff that was already known years ago. The substance doesn't seem meaningfully different, at least from a lay perspective.

^^

The point being I did not say...

"You said it needed volcanic activity to kick start life."

I said that life exists on Earth because there is volcanic activity.

I do hate when people put words in my mouth.

Let's not quotewar, Raw / Dude.

Couple years ago I remember hearing a lot about Gliese 581 C, but it's only recently that I heard about G. I remember reading that there was enthusiastic speculation about the possibility of a habitable-zone planet back then, though.

edited 9th Oct '10 10:23:32 PM by Tangent128

I'm pretty sure it was more than just speculation. I knew back in 2007 that the planet was tide locked (that is, always keeps the same face towards its sun.)

So... why now and not all those years ago?

If I knew that, I wouldn't be confused.

I don't like feeling confused, but I don't know how to resolve it. So I'l press Ignore for now.

Anyhow:

Does anyone know what, if anything, one could look for from this distance to indicate that there is life, rather than just that it is hospitable to life?

In other words, are there byproducts and such that we could detect?

Well, we could check for gases that correlate with life on Earth, except that the planet doesn't pass between us and its star, making spectra hard to obtain.

Maybe you heard one of the other planets in the system was tide-locked? The system has a good number of them...

Tidal locking is fairly common, as I understand. Anyway, if we were able to perform spectral analysis, we could see if the atmosphere contains gases consistent with life, but really I suspect that the only way to be sure is to go there...