Nearby Earth-Like Planet

SkyHog

SkyHog

Touchdown! Greaser!
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40 light years away... Probably won't be visiting it anytime soon, but you have to wonder if any life has formed on it...
 
I just love how the article doesn't answer the question....."so where the h_ll is it?" I mean Alpha Centauri is on 23mil L-Y away....or maybe it's.......oh never mind.

Journalism majors. Masters of NOTHING.
 
It's about as Earth-like as........well, not at all. It's a rocky planet with an atmosphere, and it's freakin hot.
 
bbchien said:
I just love how the article doesn't answer the question....."so where the h_ll is it?" I mean Alpha Centauri is on 23mil L-Y away....or maybe it's.......oh never mind.

Journalism majors. Masters of NOTHING.
Click to expand...

Alpha Centauri is a lot closer than that...4.37 ly actually.
 
JeffDG said:
It says "Water", at 400 degrees, it's not likely to be liquid...how much pressure would that take?
Click to expand...

About as much as it does to have 400 degree water in the undersea vents.

Looks like at 250ºC something upwards of about 39 atmospheres...or about 1175" of Hg
 
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bbchien said:
I just love how the article doesn't answer the question....."so where the h_ll is it?" I mean Alpha Centauri is on 23mil L-Y away....or maybe it's.......oh never mind.

Journalism majors. Masters of NOTHING.
Click to expand...

Actually, yes the article does say where it is...it orbits the start GJ 1214, which some further research shows is in Ophiuchus (nicely visible now).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GJ_1214

Holy crap...it has an orbital period of 1.58 days
 
It says "Water", at 400 degrees, it's not likely to be liquid...how much pressure would that take?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure where these numbers are coming from. The original source says a "planetary equilibrium temperature" of between 120C and 282C, depending on the planet's albedo.

For comparison, the Earth's equilibrium temperature is -17C. How come it doesn't feel like -17C outside? Because the Earth has an atmosphere, and it does this heat trapping thing of which we cannot speak without launching into a political discussion.

But, clearly, the Earth isn't all the same temperature, it varies between equator and poles. Also consider how temps would vary if the planet always held the same side towards the Sun, so that there would be a hot side and a cold side.

So they're hypothesizing that there may be liquid water.
-harry
 
mantakos said:
I'm not sure where these numbers are coming from. The original source says a "planetary equilibrium temperature" of between 120C and 282C, depending on the planet's albedo.

For comparison, the Earth's equilibrium temperature is -17C. How come it doesn't feel like -17C outside? Because the Earth has an atmosphere, and it does this heat trapping thing of which we cannot speak without launching into a political discussion.

But, clearly, the Earth isn't all the same temperature, it varies between equator and poles. Also consider how temps would vary if the planet always held the same side towards the Sun, so that there would be a hot side and a cold side.

So they're hypothesizing that there may be liquid water.
-harry
Click to expand...

120C = 248F
282C = 540F

400F is in that range isn't it?
 
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