The scientific world is all abuzz today about the annoucement of the first discovery of an extra-solar terrestrial planet within the “habitable zone” of its star. The planet has been inferred to orbit its sun — the star Gliese 581 — at a distance that allows for liquid water to be present on its surface. It masses about 5 times as much as Earth, and is about 50% larger. If the 50% refers to radius, then the gravity on the star’s surface would be around 20 meters per second squared, which is just over 2 times that on the Earth’s surface.
3 thoughts on “Interstellar Vacation Spot”
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Very cool.
Yes, your sporadic blog watcher is back :-).
I think the find is pretty cool and a testament to technological capabilities: finding a (roughly) earth size object 20 light years away is pretty amazing.
Although I don’t think I would want to live there. I already have the problem of being “vertically challenged” and that extra gravity would not help me out too much!
I have the opposite problem — chronic back pain from too long a spine — so I doubt I’d do well under 2g either!