I really wish astronomers would save that kind of breathless guff for more promising candidates when they can examine them in greater detail, such as G class orange-yellow dwarf stars (like our sun). There are at least two dozen candidates within fifty light years from Earth.
From the link in post #1,
According to Solstation Gliese 581 only has 3% luminosity as compared to our sun.
And another probably exaggerated claim.
Which is all well and good, but aren’t Mercury and Venus so close to our sun that their rotational period becomes essentially locked. Either so that one face of the planet remains permanently facing the sun or a rotational period locked in a 2: 3 resonance like Venus.
That’s hardly conducive to having a completely liquid surface as suggested by one of the astronomers.
Mars in our system would be more hospitable to life than something like the large planet that orbits so closely to a near dead red dwarf star with a year that lasts 13 days.
On the one hand, we haven’t any way to get there in a reasonable timescale or send and receive messages.
On the other hand, we’ve no idea if it can even support life, let alone has any of its own. All very well for it to have temperature and gravity within a nominally tolerable range, but that’s hardly starting to meet the necessary parameters. Venus is a gnat’s fart away from being habitable, cosmologically speaking, and look what a hellhole that is.
And on the gripping hand, we need to hope devoutly that it isn’t already occupied by a technologically advanced civilisation in dire need of Lebensraum and more than capable of beating the shit out of us.
Hey, all’s it needs is a few nice condo rehabs, a microbrewery and a couple of sushi or Italian joins, and gentrification will be right around the corner.
People! It’s obvious that they’ve discovered the original Kryptonian Planet.
It orbits around a red sun
It has 5 times the mass of the Earth (or so). So it’s obviously populated by human’s that:
a) are stronger than humans
b) in our yellow sun will have extra energy that activates all kinds of cool superpowers
And soon we’ll see that it has, indeed, been destroyed by its sun going nova. Or the planet burst into pieces. Or something.
d&r
