Ok, it’s a little on the big side, and kind of hot, but this extrasolar planet, in orbit around mu Arae, ranks as one of the most-Earthlike extrasolar planets discovered thus far.
Ok, it’s a little on the big side, and kind of hot, but this extrasolar planet, in orbit around mu Arae, ranks as one of the most-Earthlike extrasolar planets discovered thus far.
mine
Yes, now all we need is a bubble of air and a space moped to get there… Cool find, if useless.
I’m not against looking, but we definitely don’t have the tech to truly test a planet’s viability, and we don’t have the ability to even remotely get close to that distance with people. I hope the world’s space progs focus more on extra-planetary people rather than just robots. Otherwise we’ll end up like an Asimov world where robots did all the exploring and humans just sat around.
Re: mine
I don’t think we can convince the bill payers that human
lives are worth the risk until we’re extremely sure that
we know what we’re sending them into. I think we should
keep looking until we find a planet with a size, year, and
star similar to what we’ve got here. That will be our
best bet for convincing the bill payers that it’s worth
risking people instead of expensive machines.
Re: mine
Well, we could have some flexibility on the star type /year lenght combo, so
long as the result is sufficiently comfy…
Re: mine
I don’t think year length is a problem, since travel and communication between Earth and (dare I say it) Earth2 will take so long as to destroy any “synchronicity”. Basically, if humans were ever to colonize such a world with sub-light engines, there are going to be far more critical “time” issues than the planet’s year.
Re: mine
The problem is that I took a shortcut by saying “year” rather than “orbital radius and eccentricity.” Others have pointed out other failings in my phrasings, when all we really need is to find a world with similar surface conditions. It can be a larger, less dense planet that orbits a greater distance from a hotter star. It can be a smaller, moonless world that would have a thicker atmosphere without the tidal gravity. As long as most of the surface is similar to Earth’s, we’d manage just fine.