http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-05/new-models-show-gliese-581d-first-potentially-habitable-exoplanet
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110516080124.htm

Remember, it's confirmed to have the potential to be habitable, not confirmed to be habitable, or confirmed to be inhabited. Still, this is great news. Even though it'll be centuries before we develop the technology necessary to reach even the closest star in a reasonable amount of time, it's never too early to start coming up with destinations. And I for one will potentially welcome our potential overlords if they exist enough to respond to our two http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_d#Messages_from_Earth messages.

I saw this earlier. I think it's pretty cool it's only (well, relatively, anyway) 20 lightyears away. I don't think they will be overlords, though... if they exist. Surely, we would have seen some lights, by now, if they were advanced enough to rule us.

ALL HAIL OUR GLIESENIAN OVERLORDS!/DOWN WITH THOSE NASTY GLIESENIANS INFESTING OUR NEXT HOME!

Booo D:

But yea, this is pretty cool.

Awesome. I'm extremely jealous of those in the future who'll get to colonize other planets, assuming we don't all blow ourselves up or something.

I agree about being able to witness such cool stuff and advanced technology, but I'm already cowering at the possibility of seeing New York City permanently partially submerged in several feet of water in my own lifetime, so we can only wonder what the future of the Earth will be like. At the very least, we're getting Skyrim and they likely won't have compatible software with Skyrim at the point of colonization, so...

W7BOX. :tongue:

This is pretty cool news. I must say, I also feel a little bit jealous when I think of what people in the far future may be able to do and the places they may be able to go. But then, this is probably just me thinking it would be as cool as science fiction has depicted it as, which it probably won't be.

I'm jealous of everyone living in any future era of space exploration that isn't this one, honestly. This one is great in it's own right, after all, we're going to be the first generation to see Vesta up close come this July, as well as Ceres and Pluto in just a few years... but we're in a (long) transition period of manned spaceflight outside of LEO, and that's rather frustrating. Lord knows how old I'll be once man steps on the moon again, let alone Mars. With every new president changing, for better or worse, the past president's space agenda, I don't have much confidence the current dates set by this administration will hold up. The privatization of space flight as well as other countries catching up to us makes me more hopeful for the future, but we're in 2011, not the future.



Well, I'm sure once the time comes that we'll need them, we'll put up some levees, but here's hoping they wont be the kind that break during disasters (do they even make other kinds?).

Aye. I'm worried they might not meet that 2020 date for revisiting the moon and while our computers advance so rapidly, it seems space technology takes years. :wallbash:





I was thinking that the world could say "screw money, we need to work together" (yeah right), push to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels, recycle, and, if the time comes, build some type of hose that shoots excess sea water out to space (I really don't understand why this should be THAT hard... aside from money).

Am I missing some irony here? Why would you want to do that? =/ Rising sea levels are just a part of global warming which in turn is just a part of a the environmental problem. It's water that will disapper from the biosphere, and imagine the fun when the water receeds again.

While I won't say that I wouldn't want to live in a "real" space age, I've passed those thoughts beyond me, because science isn't likely to run out of stuff to find anytime and everyone will keep thinking, "oh, I wish I lived then instead". Of course, by the time they find immortality, that'll be irrelevant... Awww, now I started to think like that anyway

Receeds? It won't receed again until we can create H2O molecules. Think outside the box, man, think.

Ship the water to the moon.

Few posts here about being jealous of future generations, but think how lucky we are. Imagine someone from the 13th century seeing how easy our lives are. "Hey, in the future they will discover another potentially habitable planet." "Heresy." [Gets burnt at stake.] We are very fortunate to (still) live in an age of scientific discovery.
Some may say all this science is soulless or whatever, but the fact that a world like this, or a new sub atomic particle, or some mad deep sea micro-ecosystem can be discovered says to me that we are actually living in an age of wonder. Could actually get boring in the future when there is less left for science to find.

Tidally locked, toxic atmosphere. Yeah it will be interesting to see how this is habitable.

I think the 13th century had it pretty good when it came to wonder and discovery. I mean, imagine a world without satellite technology or media and not really knowing what lies beyond your own doorstep.

I don't see things ever getting boring in the future either - at least not while humans continue to exist. No matter how far science progresses, we're never going to be able to explore anything more than the tiniest portion of the universe or make contact with the near-infinite number of planets inhabited by intelligent lifeforms...

Toxic to us, not necessarily to life. Though really, with our current understanding of alien life (none), anything that has some type of liquid will raise questions of whether or not it has life. Until we know more about where life absolutely cannot form, even a world such as Titan will be rich with possibilities.

See your point, Europe may have been kept in ignorance by the church and feudalism, but the Arab world was making advances in mathematics and medicine, but we have the tools now to gain a deeper understanding of the universe as it really is, and that knowledge is very widely disseminated, not reserved for the few privileged with access to any education back then.

I was exited to hear about hthis and that SETI is now bing piointed this way. they were running out of funding, hopefully htey start getting a lot more now.

20 Light Years away? In astronomical terms that is practically next door, or down the block at most, but unless we can break the laws of physics humans aren't going further than Mars.

Space is [censored] big, and speed of light (~3.000.000.000.000 meters per second) is [censored] slow when it comes to interstellar travel.