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This is really exciting: an international team of astronomers has discovered that Tau Ceti, the closest single star like our Sun, has planets just like our solar system. But more importantly, one of these planets orbits in the habitable zone around the star.
Tau Ceti is very close to Earth. It’s only 12 light-years away, which is cosmic terms is just around the corner. It’s so close that, even while it’s like our Sun, we can see it with the naked eye at night.
The most exciting news is about the Earth-ish planet found in this solar system’s goldilocks region, the circumstellar zone area in which, theoretically, life would develop.
The artist’s impression above shows its five planets with masses that vary between two to six times the mass of Earth. The astronomers, who used more than six-thousand observations and three different instruments, say that this is “the lowest-mass planetary system yet detected.”
This is an important discovery, as it shows once again that almost every star has planets. According to UC Santa Cruz professor of astronomy and astrophysics Steve Vogt — one of the authors of the study that is going to be published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics — “this discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such potentially habitable Earth-sized planets.”
The sightly bad news is that the universe seems to prefer systems that have planets with orbits less than 100 days. According to Vogt, “this is quite unlike our own solar system, where there is nothing with an orbit inside that of Mercury. So our solar system is, in some sense, a bit of a freak and not the most typical kind of system that Nature cooks up.”
Still, the evidence seems pretty overwhelming. With an estimated 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone, and millions and millions and galaxies in the universe, the statistical probability of planets full of life just like ours is overwhelming. We now just need to visit. And 12 light years away is a perfect place to star, just in our own neighborhood. [UCSC]
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This is probably the most exciting news in astronomy in ages! 12 light years is a realistic distance for humans to travel in the near future, when slightly faster and more economic propulsion methods have been developed.
Hopefully the planet is enough like Earth for humans to survive on, because I’m not holding out much hope for this planet lasting much longer.
Unless of course, it’s populated by terrifying space-monsters
Well, sometimes you’ve just got to punch an alien in the face.
Just because it is in the habitable zone does not mean it is anything close to habitable, all it means is that IF water existed on this planet it could exist in a liquid state. There is still only a small chance that the atmosphere and composition of the planet would be suitable for life as we know it.
Give us a good start and we’ll terraform the rest.
Oh its certainly a good start and suggests a much higher likelihood of earth-like planets in the galaxy thus suggesting a higher likelihood of habitable planets, I just think the headline has a very poor choice of words.
When is the headline not a poor choice of words around here these days, Gizmodo?
If it’s that close, cant we turn Hubble onto it and get some Visible light images of the Planets?
Also, if we did manage to get a probe there, it would still take 12 years just for any data to get back here, let alone guess how long it would take to send the probe there!
But yes, this is very exciting and goes to prove what i’ve always thought, we’re not that special or unique and its naive and ignorent to think otherwise.
Yeah, ‘just around the corner’ in cosmic terms is much further than ‘just out of reach’ in human terms. Planets outside our solar system are simply far too small, and far too distant to be observe with any telescope. Given their relative proximity to their local star, it would be equivalent of trying to determine, from 100m away, the structural properties of a grain of sand placed on the face of a floodlight.
I see what you’re saying there, that makes sense and is very disappointing!
Good news everyone!
Can we get there before the 21st of this month (just in case the Mayans are right)?
Ark II is waiting for you.
see you there….quick question, upon entering do I turn left or right?
Awesome. I really hope that at some point in my life span astronomers identify mammalian-like life on other planets. It would make me overwhelmingly happy knowing that even though we’ve fucked this planet to shit, there are millions of others out there which are immaculate.
And ready for us to fuck them to shit?
Something like that
Nah, I just hope that they’re all too far away for us to affect.