New Planet Discovered 2010 Gliese 581g: Is This a Sign of Another Earth? – With billions of population, the planet Earth now is overly populated. This makes a scarce resource for everyone. Scientists have been exploring the universe for quite some time now in search for another planet which can support life. One of the most studied planet is the red planet known as Mars because of the possible presence of water. However, based on further research, the lack of a magnetosphere and its extremely thin atmosphere pose great challenge to life’s sustainability.
A recent study conducted by a team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington led to the discovery of a new planet using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Accordingly, the new findings are based on 11 years of observations of the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581. Gliese 581 is located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra.
The new planet discovered is located in the Gliese 581 star system, in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” or an area where planets can can support liquid water on their surface. Hence the new planet discovered was named “Gliese 581g” or the “Goldilocks Planet”. Reportedly, this new planet has a mass of three to four times that of Earth and orbits its star in just under 37 days.
There’s one more interesting fact about this newly discovered planet called Gliese 581g. Since it is tidally locked to the Gliese 581 dwarf star, one side of the planet is always facing the star and is in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness.
There’s a zone known as the Goldilocks Zone, where there may (or may not) be planets capable of supporting life. They call it the Goldilocks Zone because it’s not too hot, it’s not too cold, it’s just right. So far, scientists have not yet uncovered a planet that fits within that Goldilocks Zone, but with the discovery of Gliese 581 g, they may have uncovered the first rocky planet capable of supporting human life, which has astronomers thrilled beyond all reasonable measurement.
The Goldilocks Planet orbits a star called Gliese 581, which is a red dwarf star about 20 light years from Earth. It’s not exactly a nearby neighbor, but it’ll serve its purpose in a few hundred years when we finally achieve advanced space flight. It’s also a piece of evidence that supports the theory that there may be billions of worlds in the solar system capable of supporting humanity and its constant drive for expansion (and just in case we need to escape a destroyed home world).
“If you take the number of stars in our galaxy – a few hundred billion – and multiply them by 10 or 20 per cent, you end up with 20 or 40 billion potentially habitable planets out there,” says astronomer Steven Vogt. “It’s a very large number.” Hooray for a Warhammer 20K future!
