New Planet Discovered 2010 Called Gliese 581g Might Sustain Life
New Planet Discovered 2010 Called Gliese 581g Might Sustain Life - The possibility of life beyond Earth and our Solar System is indeed big and very possible. It is not remotely possible but it is "very possible." Just recently astronomers discovered an Earth-like exoplanet that may have just the right kind of conditions to support life.
The planet was named Gliese 581g and is about 20 light-years away in its star's "Goldilocks zone." The zone is defined as a region surface temperature that would allow the presence of liquid water.
Their findings of the new planet discover in 2010 was made with the Keck telescope in Hawaii, appear in the Astrophysical Journal.
Discovery of the new planet was a product of the researchers, from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who had been studying the movement of the planet's parent star, a red dwarf called Gliese 581, for 11 years.
At present the number of planets orbiting Gliese 581 to six with Gliese 581g as the most Earth-like and has the highest possibility of possible life. Gliese 581g has a mass about three to four times that of Earth. It orbits its sun in 37 days and is thought to be a rocky world. It has enough gravity to possibly have an atmosphere.
Is alien life possible?
"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at UCSC. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."
