Allan Martin Abao Dosdos II May 18, 2011

1ST Year AB Philosophy NsSCI

Has the question of life beyond earth been

answered finally by Gliese 581?
The cosmos never ceases to amaze us with its sheer size and splendor. The star studded sky
above us and the vast unexplored eternity that lay beyond us have always captured both human
mind and human heart. While the glitz and shine of the stars and the spectacular celestial aura
have drawn us towards them, it is impossible to deny that our space programs are barely at a
stage of infancy, with 99.9% of the universe still left unexplored. It is this magic of finding
something new each day, each moment, each time you point your telescope in to the sky that
hold our imagination and ignites our senses. The universe around us is so kind that you can
randomly look at any part of it and it still will give you a surprise or two. You can call that either
our luck or our sheer ignorance.

But since ages, the question that has intrigued us the most is, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’
This one question has always baffled our thoughts, challenged our imagination and of course
made Spielberg in to a movie making icon. But off late scientists are starting to believe more and
more that the answer to that question is ‘No’. The discovery of Gliese 581 was one of the most
exciting moments in extra-solar planetary researcher. The star is said to be having a planetary
system and now researchers claim that they have found two planets that might be conducive to
existence of life on them.

Astronomers have found an Earth-massed planet orbiting within the habitable zone of a distant
star. This would mean that liquid water could be on its surface - and maybe even life! Any planet
needs to be at a right distance from its own sun, so as to be able to maintain conditions that help
the sustenance of life on it. If it is too close to the star, it loses the water on its surface due to
excessive heat and if it is too far, it might be too cold to harbor life. Two separate teams of
astronomers have found out in two different ways that the system of Gliese 581 has planets in the
habitable zone. They did this by calculating and comparing the position of Earth and the planet
on which they believe life could exist.

The first team lead by Franck Selsis calculated that the inner boundary of this habitable zone
around Gliese 581 should be somewhere between 0.7 and 0.9 astronomical units and the outer
zone should be between 1.7 and 2.4 AU. At least one planet orbiting Gliese 581 falls within this
range. Now that is indeed exciting news. I always thought that we would find life beyond earth
first on Titan- Saturn’s largest moon. But I still think the problem is that we look for life that is
organic-similar to ourselves in nature. Why can’t life have evolved out of Platinum and gold
somewhere else in the cosmos? Now that would be ‘Rich life’, if not intelligent.

Source

Tags: Astronomy, Gliese 581, Space Research, Planets, Stars, Technology

Nikki John Tyalaran

1st Year AB Philosophy

Gliese 581d: An Exoplanet Fit for Humans?

A rocky world orbiting a nearby star has been confirmed as the first planet outside our solar
system to meet key requirements for sustaining life, scientists said on Monday.Modeling of
planet Gliese 581d shows it has the potential to be warm and wet enough to nurture Earth-like
life, they said.It orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, located around 20 light years from
Earth, which makes it one of our closest neighbors.Gliese 581d orbits on the outer fringes of the
star's "Goldilocks zone", where it is not so hot that water boils away, nor so cold that water is
perpetually frozen. Instead, the temperature is just right for water to exist in liquid form.

"With a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere -- a likely scenario on such a large planet -- the climate
of Gliese 581d is not only stable against collapse but warm enough to have oceans, clouds and
rainfall," France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a press release.More
than 500 planets orbiting other stars have been recorded since 1995, detected mostly by a tiny
wobble in stellar light.Exoplanets are named after their star and listed alphabetically, in order of
discovery.

Until now, the big interest in Gliese 581's roster of planets focused on Gliese 581g.It leapt into
the headlines last year as "Zarmina's World," after its observers announced it had roughly the
same mass as Earth's and was also close to the Goldilocks zone.But that discovery has since been
discounted by many. Indeed, some experts suspect that the Gliese 581g may not even exist but
was simply a hiccup in starlight.Its big brother, Gliese 581d, has a mass at least seven times that
of Earth and is about twice our planet's size, according to the new study, which appears in a
British publication, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The planet, spotted in 2007, had initially been dismissed as a candidate in the hunt for life.It
receives less than a third of the solar radiation Earth gets, and may be "tidally locked", meaning
that one side of it always faces the sun, which would give it permanent dayside and nightside.But
the new model, devised by CNRS climate scientists Robin Wordsworth, Francois Forget and
colleagues, showed surprising potential.

Its atmosphere would store heat well, thanks to its dense CO 2, a greenhouse gas. And the red
light from the star would also penetrate the atmosphere and warm the surface."In all cases, the
temperatures allow for the presence of liquid water on the surface," say the researchers.For
budding travelers, though, Gliese 581d would "still be a pretty strange place to visit," the CNRS
said."The denser air and thick clouds would keep the surface in a perpetualmurky red twilight,
and its large mass means that surface gravity would be around double that on Earth."Getting to
the planet would still require a sci-fi breakthrough in travel for earthlings.A spaceship traveling
close to light speed would take more than 20 years to get there, while our present rocket
technology would take 300,000 years.