More on the Waterworld Goldilocks Planet 107
goldilocksmission writes with this snippet from Goldilocks Mission: "News spread recently about a super-earth-sized planet that has been recently discovered to contain one of the most essential compounds for life to exist in the universe: water. ... GJ1214b is a massive planet that can house about six earths and is about forty light-years away from us. ... The significant discovery leap of detecting Gliese 581d to the more goldilocks planet oriented GJ1214b is a testament to the advances in the technology of detecting earth-like exoplanets."
Goldilocks? (Score:4, Interesting)
nothing new here (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:nothing new here (Score:4, Interesting)
That's exactly what the Vatican told Galileo!
Re:Goldilocks? (Score:3, Interesting)
Its density is less than 2g/cm^3.
Its surface gravity is about 0.9g.
It is probably a small rock surrounded by hundreds or thousands of miles of ice.
In other words, the temperature may be "just right", but the planet is iffy, at best.
Re:Goldilocks? (Score:2, Interesting)
except that they estimate the surface temp. of the planet is 200 deg. C. how is that in the Goldilocks zone?
-Tony
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
Or find themselves unable to perpetuate itself on a planet with as weak a gravity as ours.
It's also worth noting that "potential for life" thought excercise that went on a couple years ago where a nice sampling of biologists were speculating that a super-earth would have a large number of flying creatures as their atmospheres would be much thicker and thereby be more easily able to move about their environment.