A habitable planet outside Earth has been found

[Mefistofeles]

According to Wired magazine. Its name is Gliese581g. It's 20 light-years away from us.

"After years of saying habitable exoplanets are just around the corner, planet hunters have finally found one. Gliese 581g is the first planet found to lie squarely in its star’s habitable zone, where the conditions are right for liquid water."

...

"The surface of a planet that close to our sun would be scorching hot. But because the star Gliese 581 is only about 1 percent as bright as the sun, temperatures on the new planet should be much more comfortable. Taking into account the presence of an atmosphere and how much starlight the planet probably reflects, astronomers calculated the average temperature ranges from minus 24 degrees to 10 degrees above zero Fahrenheit."

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/real-habitable-exoplanet/gj581g/

Here's a similar piece from The Telegraph (UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8033124/Gliese-581g-the-most-Earth-like-planet-yet-discovered.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Good. There is a whole bunch of people that should be sent there

to form their own libertarian-fundamentalist paradise and leave the rest of us earthlings the hell alone.

[greyl]

3. 117500000000000 miles away isn't enough. nt

[caledesi]

4. Agree TVO...leave us in peace! nt

[DJ13]

2. We dont have to turn blue to live there, do we?

(K&R!)

[pinboy3niner]

6. I sure hope not!

[kentauros]

13. I could live with blue:

[MilesColtrane]

5. Sounds like Canada.

Maybe we can placate the indigenous population with promises of unlimited back bacon shipments from Terra.

[Techn0Girl]

8. RTFA - the OP said "habitable"

(just kidding Canadians - I actually like (envy) your country)

[Techn0Girl]

7. A bit of media hype I'm afraid....

We currently have no way of detecting whether a extra-solar planet is habitable but that should change within 5-10 years.

What the scientists did find was the signature of a planet roughly 3 times the mass of earth that is orbiting a red dwarf star in the zone that allows water to be a liquid. We have no way of currently knowing if the planet has an atmosphere, if indeed there is any water in the system or anything else about the planet other than it's rough mass and it's distance form the sun (in this case, 13 million klicks away).

The media hypes this up to silly levels. The level of science education among what's left of reporters these days is appalling.

[EstimatedProphet]

12. From the article

The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness.

Also:

The most interesting of the two new planets is Gliese 581g, with a mass three to four times that of the Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days.

These things would tend to affect the meaning of "habitable". Although to their credit, the authors talk about how it is POSSIBLE that water exists there, instead of just claiming that it does.

[Hannah Bell]

9. send the banksters there & let them eat each other.

[HopeHoops]

10. I suggest we not go there. We'd just fuck it up like we did this one.

[Sedona]

11. Am I missing something?

Where in in universe can water be liquid at "minus 24 degrees to 10 degrees above zero Fahrenheit"?

[uncommon]

14. What is the freezing point for a substantial size body of salt water?

I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I know salt water can remain liquid on Earth at very low surface temperatures.

[Erose999]

17. The atmospheric pressure might be diffreent. I'm not all that knowledgable about it but

I know that atmospheric pressure has a lot to do with the boiling and freezing points of water.

Really the things we need from most to least important are:

1.) liquid water

2.) oxygen in the atmosphere

3.) Gravity similar to Earth gravity (don't want our bodies to atrophy, astronauts who stay in zero gravity have to exercise all the time.)

4.) Atmospheric pressure and density similar to Earth's

[Jamastiene]

15. I wish they would make the name easier to remember.

What if the inhabitants already have their own name for it? Wait. Nevermind. It will be renamed to that weird series of letters and numbers we named it, after we kill all the inhabitants and take over. :(

[rug]

16. Lot of speculation there.