Difference between revisions of "Gliese 581g"

Revision as of 17:21, 3 October 2010

Gliese 581 g, called Zarmina's World by co-discoverer Steven Vogt, is a "small" rocky planet located in Gliese 581's Goldilocks zone^[3]. It was discovered by a team lead by Steven Vogt (UCO Lick) and Paul Butler (DTM Carnagie Institute) in an 11-year project that completed in 2010. The announcement of its existence caused Fen to start looking for habitable planets around red dwarf stars, the possibility of which they had largely ignored up to that point.

The planet is tidally locked to its primary, but surface temperatures are believed to be stable.

There are no current plans to colonize Zarmina's World - even the Inuit would have trouble surviving in such cold conditions and high gravity, and Fenspace's terraforming resources are being used at Mars and Venus.

Some Fen are planning to have a powerful radio telescope in operation in orbit around Zarmina's World for March 2029 in order to receive and record the message sent from Earth in 2008 by a "Web 2.0 Portal" corporation. Considering the contents of the message, opinions are divide as to whether this recording will be used as a historical record or as blackmail material.

Notes

1. ↑ Estimates place the planet's gravity at somewhere between 1.1g and 1.7g.
2. ↑ Surface temperatures could average between -31°C to -12°C - hotter on the light side, colder on the dark side.
3. ↑ Not too hot, not too cold - just right for life as we know it to exist.

Sources

• Astronomy Picture of the Day: Zarmina's World
• Christian Science Monitor: Gliese 581g, a new planet like Earth: Could humans live there?
• The Register: HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!
• SPACE.com: Alien World Tour: The Exoplanets Around Star Gliese 581