MADness—the Blog

I suppose there are two possibilities.  One, we are alone.  The other, we are not.  Not to be naïve about it, but I find the second scenario especially hopeful.

Thursday’s news was fascinating, if you’re at all interested in the universe around us (and why wouldn’t you be?).  We now know of almost 500 extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, all detected since 1992.  We live in exciting times.

Is this the new Earth?  Astronomers discover planet just 20 light years away with similar atmosphere and gravity which has ’100% chance of life’ – and may contain water

This artist’s conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and their host star, a red dwarf star only 20 light years away from Earth. The four tiny planets in the background are the planets that have already been discovered. The closer, blue and green planet is 581G, the most Earth-like planet ever discovered

The chances that future generations will one day colonise the stars have just got higher.

Astronomers tonight announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever found – a rocky world three times the size of our own world, orbiting a star 20 light years away. 

The planet lies in the star’s ‘Goldilocks zone’ – the region in space where conditions are neither too hot or too cold for liquid water to form oceans, lakes and rivers. 

The planet also appears to have an atmosphere, a gravity like our own and could well be capable of life. 

The discovery comes three years after astronomers found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same star – described by astronomers as being ‘in our backyard’ in the Milky Way. 

Researchers say the findings suggest the universe is teeming with world like our own.

‘If these are rare, we shouldn’t have found one so quickly and so nearby,’ Dr Steven Vogt who led the study at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

‘The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 per cent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that’s a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy.’

He told Discovery News: ‘Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it’.