# Could there be life -- and what sort -- on planet Gliese 581 g? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 5, 2010, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081 "2010-10-05T03:08:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/61 "2010-10-24T05:27:24Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > You are forgetting about relativity, we could get to the edges of our galaxy rocket mans lifetime because of realitivity at .1c, although no one on earth would be alive Not even close. At .1c, time dilation is almost nonexistent (1.005). To cut perceived time in half, you actually have to be going something like .8c. To get to the point where someone could live a normal life in a spaceship and move across an entire galaxy, you’re going very near the speed of light anyway: At .99c, the time dilation factor is 223.6. So if your guy lives 100 years, he could travel 22,360 light years. That would almost get him to the center of our galaxy, just in time to be devoured by the giant black hole that lives there. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/62 "2011-02-03T23:46:55Z")
[Five more possibly Earthlike planets found!](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379256,00.asp) ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2011, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/63 "2011-02-03T23:55:41Z")
But space exploration is worthless. We shouldn’t be bothering trying to find new planets until all of the problems on Earth have been completely solved and everyone lives in a Utopian paradise. Cut the budgets on manned and unmanned space exploration! We could pour that money back into the budget and it would fix all our problems! (I think it’s pretty cool that in such a short time we have managed to find so many Earth like planets, and I hope that someday we build some solar system scale telescopes that can let us take a closer look at what might be out there. It would be nice if we could explore our own solar system more intensely as well) -XT ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/64 "2011-02-04T16:29:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Five more possibly Earthlike planets found!](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379256,00.asp) In the next two years, that will turn into a flood of planets. Due to the nature of Kepler’s technology, it takes about three years to confirm a planet in an orbit similar to Earth’s. The planets they are finding now are orbiting very close around their star. If the star is a a low luminosity dwarf, that can put them in a habitable zone. But for sun-like stars, we’ll have earthlike planetary candidates known in about another year, and confirmation the year after that. Also, Kepler can only detect planets in solar systems that have an orbital plane that causes the planet to occlude its star from our perspective. That’s probably a small percentage of overall star systems. So for every one we detect, we can assume that there are many others in the same region. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/65 "2011-02-04T17:54:08Z")
Damn! The possibilities! If we could just solve a few little technical problems (constant-boost drive, reactionless drive, faster-than-light drive, artificial gravity, antigravity, inertial dampeners, things like that), why, we could swarm across the Universe and crush all living things under our heels! (Wait, this is the Bearded-Spock timeline we’re living in, isn’t it?) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/66 "2011-02-04T17:59:11Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Also, Kepler can only detect planets in solar systems that have an orbital plane that causes the planet to occlude its star from our perspective. That’s probably a small percentage of overall star systems. So for every one we detect, we can assume that there are many others in the same region. Indeed, the point of Kepler is that by looking at a large number of stars simultaneously it can catch the small percentage that happen to have planets with orbital planes edge on to us. When complete, the Kepler mission is expected to be able to answer the question of statistically how common earthlike planets are in our galaxy. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/67 "2011-02-04T20:55:17Z")
I suspect that if we ever do engage in a project of interstellar exploration, the first probe that we send out will be passed en route by an updated probe sent much later. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/68 "2011-02-04T22:41:45Z")
Which is why we probably won’t build interstellar probes until (and if) we can ever approach significant fractions of the speed of light. What we’ll do instead is build big freaking telescopes. Instead of spending $50 billion on a longshot interstellar probe that will take decades to reach its target, I’d much rather invest $50 billion in a huge interferometry array in space that could image continents on planets around other stars and directly detect markers for life, and which we would get results from almost instantly upon deployment. I think the fundamental cost/benefit equation will push us towards ever-bigger telescopes than into building interstellar probes - at least for the rest of our natural lifespans. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2011, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/69 "2011-02-06T02:55:06Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Well, if the earth is any guide life manages to exist near everywhere it is conceivably possible to exist and some not so conceivable. > > There is life in Antarctica: > > To life at the bottom of the ocean in scalding, poisonous water: > > In the end who knows? Just don’t let harsh conditions dissuade you from thinking something might be there. This is my view. There is life in every place on earth, from extreme cold to extreme heat. Oxygen rich to oxygen deprived. There is no reason to think that life can’t occur in any environment other than absolute zero. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2011, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/70 "2011-02-06T13:53:09Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > This is my view. There is life in every place on earth, from extreme cold to extreme heat. Oxygen rich to oxygen deprived. There is no reason to think that life can’t occur in any environment other than absolute zero. Whoa, let’s not be so hasty. There is no life on the Moon. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/71 "2011-02-06T16:36:05Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Whoa, let’s not be so hasty. There is no life on the Moon. Am I being whooshed? Just because life _could_ appear doesn’t mean it _must_ appear. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2011, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081/72 "2011-02-06T21:55:38Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > Am I being whooshed? Just because life _could_ appear doesn’t mean it _must_ appear. Do you think it would even be possible to gene-engineer an organism that could survive on the Lunar surface? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-there-be-life-and-what-sort-on-planet-gliese-581-g/556081.md?page=3)