Found: An Earthlike Planet at Last
The planet is only about three or four times as massive as our home world, meaning it probably has a solid surface just like Earth. Much more important, it sits smack in the middle of the so-called habitable zone, orbiting at just the right distance from the star to let water remain liquid rather than freezing solid or boiling away. As far as we know, that's a minimum requirement for the presence of life. For thousands of years, philosophers and scientists have wondered whether other Earths existed out in the cosmos. And since the first, very un-Eearthlike extrasolar planet was discovered in 1995, astronomers have been inching closer to answering that question. Now, they've evidently succeeded (although to be clear, there's no way at this point to determine whether there actually is life on the new planet).Remember the day, and the name: 29 September, 2010 - Gliese 581g.
Does this mean aliens from Gliese 581g are visiting Earth? Of course not. But it does point out, yet again, why the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the UFO phenomenon, of all the "paranormal" hypotheses on offer, makes the most sense - by far.
Paul Kimball
5 comments:
>>But it does point out, yet again, why the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the UFO phenomenon, of all the "paranormal" hypotheses on offer, makes the most sense - by far.
But, I've always been curious why extra-terrestrials from 20 light years away would come all of the way here, dressed like Italians, to cook buckwheat pancakes on the stove inside their spaceship just for farmer Simington.
I've always wondered about that....and, when I do, the ETH still doesn't make any sense to me at all.
John
The mistake you make is trying to figure out why any extraterrestrial beings would come here (assuming for the moment that they have). Who knows? I'm sure the native Americans didn't have a clue as to why the Europeans landed on the shore when they first showed up.
What's important is to look at the likelihood of something happening. As far as the various paranormal "theories" on offer go, the ETH is the one that can actually offer some proof as to its possibility, in that we know there are other planets out there.
PK
Paul, In your opinion is ETH just the best paranormal hypothesis or the best hypothesis period?
CMP:
Best paranormal hypothesis - I always keep those separate from all of the possible prosaic explanations.
Paul
I have always found the word "prosaic" to be unusual, exciting and glamourous. :)
I even like the planet's name: Gliese 581g. I'm betting that as technology for discovering such places advances, we'll be discovering a lot more "Earthlike" planets, to the point that we'll find it difficult to believe just how primitive our methods of discovery were prior to 1995.
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