Gliese 581d Confirmed as 'Habitable' Exoplanet

An anonymous reader writes "A rocky world orbiting a nearby star was confirmed (PDF) as the first planet outside our Solar System to meet key requirements for sustaining life." The "key requirement" was actually a Starbucks — astronomers were pretty surprised to find out that they like their coffee burnt on Gliese 581d too.

Re:Habitable

[Brett Buck]

Given that there are very scientifically sound and obvious limitations on chemical processes involved in known or postulated life, that doesn't seem to outrageously presumptuous.

Re:Wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is something that may interest you. This is a time-lapse video of asteroids discoveries. You'll notice the amount and distance increasing considerably as we reach the present. This shows the difference between technologies 20 years ago and the current ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw

depressing: first of a 1000 known planets

[peter303]

It should get better. The Doppler planets and early Kepler results are biased toward extreme planets. By 3rd year Kepler should be seeing 1 A.U. planets.

Re:We've sent them a message already...

[LWATCDR]

I guess I find it really odd that we would do that. First thing I would do is turn our Radio Telescopes to it and see if we can hear anything. Seems kind of rude to just start shouting at them. Of course if you think about it Humans have had a civilisation for well over 4000 years on Earth. Yes it was primitive but we have been reading and writing and smelting metals and creating art for more than 4000 years. We have only had radio for about 100 of those years and radio telescopes for around 50 years. There could be a civilisation on that planet equal to 1900 and we couldn't talk to them.