New planet 'may support life'
Last Modified: 25 Apr 2007
By: Tom Clarke
A new planet, Gliese 581 C, contains the conditions required to support life, scientists say.
Newly proposed planet, Gliese 581c is just over 120 trillion miles away. Travelling at the speed of light it would take 20 years for any message from Earth to get there.
If they exist, and they'd been listening out for us today - the Gliesians might well be watching this...
To be alive in the universe, you have to be lucky.
There's life on Earth because our home planet orbits the Sun at just the right distance. On Mercury - it's just too hot, on Mars, a bit cold, but on Earth, it's just right. That's why scientists call this zone around our planet - the 'goldilocks zone.'
Twenty light years away the new planet's solar system is a very very different place, but today's findings show it's just possible those fairytale conditions exist there too. Gliese 581 is much older and only half as warm as our Sun, but its new planet, Gliese 581c orbits much, much closer, soaking up that warmth. That puts it in the same zone as our Earth
Using telescopes here at the European Southern Observatory, in Chile's Atacama desert Mayers' team detected a subtle wobble in the distant star likely caused by the orbiting planet. The orbit suggests temperatures between 0 and 40 degrees centigrade, that means their might be water. Warm, rocky and wet could mean life.
New missions might be able to actually see planets like Gliese 581c, but until they do the existence of most small distant planets, inferred from wobbles, can't actually be confirmed.
Bookies may have today revised their odds on the discovery of alien life within a year. The better odds are that Gliese 581c may not exist at all.
